Into the Era of High Performance Blockchains

We’ve come a long way since the early days of blockchain, when sending a transaction meant waiting minutes, and sometimes paying dollars, for a simple confirmation. But times are changing. A new wave of high-performance blockchains is emerging, promising faster speeds, lower costs, and a smoother user experience.

In this article, we’ll break down what “performance” in blockchain actually means today. We’ll go beyond the surface-level numbers like TPS, test how real transactions feel across different chains, and explore whether these performance gains are coming at a cost. As new networks like Monad and MegaETH enter the scene and L2s like Base and Arbitrum continue to evolve, we’re getting a glimpse into the future of what using blockchain could, and should, feel like.

1) Measuring Blockchain Performance

With the rise of high-throughput chains like Solana, users quickly fell in love with fast and cheap transactions. Solana proved that a smart contract platform could offer similar functionality to Ethereum, only faster and at a fraction of the cost.

At its recent peak, Solana hit 4,825 transactions per second (TPS). That sounds amazing, but there’s more to the story. About two-thirds of those were “vote transactions”, which are messages between network validators to keep everything in sync, not real user activity. When you filter those out, the actual TPS for user activity was about 1,592. Still very fast, but a reminder that not all transactions are created equal.

So… is TPS a bad way to measure blockchain performance?

Not exactly. It’s useful as a rough guide, but it doesn't paint the full picture. Some chains can inflate TPS by doing lots of simple transactions (like transferring tokens), while others process fewer but more complex ones. That’s where new ways of measuring come in.

UOPS (User Operations Per Second)

Instead of counting whole transactions, UOPS breaks things down into individual actions inside a transaction. Think of it like this:

• A basic token transfer = 1 user operation
• An advanced transaction using account abstraction might include 5+ actions bundled together (like approving tokens, transferring, swapping, all in one go)

So even if TPS looks lower, a chain doing more in fewer transactions could actually be more powerful. Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra upgrade will make it easier to do this kind of thing, which could boost UOPS.

But just like TPS, UOPS isn’t perfect either. Some developers might game the metric by making things more complex than they need to be, just to push up the number. So what else can we look at?

GPS (Gas Per Second)

Every action on Ethereum (and similar chains) costs "gas". It's basically a measure of how much computing power is used. Gas Per Second (GPS) shows how much a network can handle every second.

• Right now, Ethereum handles around 1.5 million gas per second (with a cap of 3 million)
• Base (an Ethereum Layer 2) has been increasing its gas limit by 1 million gas per second (Mgas/s) every week since late 2024
• Some newer chains claim to hit 1 billion gas per second (or Ggas/s)

That said, GPS only really works as a comparison between EVM-based chains (like Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, etc.). Other chains like Solana or Starknet use totally different systems (things like “compute units” or “Cairo steps”), so it’s hard to compare apples to apples without a standard way to convert them.

After all this, you might be wondering, do these numbers even matter for people like me?

Honestly, the answer is simple. The only speed that really matters for users like us is how quickly our transaction goes through. If it gets confirmed in seconds and everything works as expected, that’s what counts. And that’s exactly what we’ll explore next, how all this behind-the-scenes performance stuff translates into better experiences for you.

2) How Faster Blockchains Enhance Your Experience

When you send a transaction on a blockchain, like swapping tokens or buying an NFT, the time it takes to get confirmed is crucial. This delay, known as latency, directly impacts how smooth and responsive your experience feels. Let's explore how different blockchains perform in real-world scenarios.

Testing Transaction Speeds Across Blockchains

To understand how latency affects user experience, we performed a simple test by swapping a native coin for a token. We measured the time from clicking "confirm" in the wallet to seeing a success message in the app.

While various factors can influence transaction latency, this test focuses on the observable speed from a user's perspective.

Results:

1. Ethereum

In our test, a typical swap on Ethereum took around 10 seconds to confirm. This aligns with Ethereum’s 12-second block time, where transactions often wait for the next block to be added before being confirmed. Compared to other chains, this feels noticeably slower.

2. Base

On Base, which has around 5 times the TPS of Ethereum and a shorter 2-second block time, the swap confirmed much faster in our test, taking about 5 seconds, roughly half the time it took on Ethereum.

Base is also testing an upgrade to further reduce its block time to just 0.2 seconds, which could make confirmations even snappier.

3. Arbitrum

On Arbitrum, even though its TPS is lower than Base, the much shorter 0.25-second block time led to even faster confirmations in our test. The swap was confirmed in just 2 seconds.

4. Solana

At the time of testing, Solana had an average block time of 0.4 seconds and a true TPS of 1,032. Under these conditions, a regular token swap took about 2 seconds to confirm.

5. Monad Testnet

Monad, a highly anticipated EVM-compatible Layer 1 currently in testnet, processes around 160 TPS with a 0.5-second block time. In our test, the swap confirmed in just 2 seconds, matching the speed of swapping on Arbitrum & Solana.

6. MegaETH Testnet

MegaETH, another promising Ethereum Layer 2 currently in testnet, processes around 263 TPS with an extremely short 0.014-second block time. In our test, the swap confirmed in just 1 second, making the experience feel almost instantaneous.

The Impact on User Experience

These results demonstrate how advancements in blockchain technology significantly enhance user experience. Faster block times and higher TPS lead to quicker transaction confirmations, reducing waiting times and making interactions with dApps more seamless.

​In the tests above, transaction confirmation times improved significantly, from 10 seconds on Ethereum to 2 seconds on Solana and just 1 second on MegaETH testnet. This 5 to 10x enhancement highlights the substantial progress in blockchain performance and scalability.​

3) Transaction Costs Matter Too

Speed isn’t everything, cost matters too. For instance, if it costs 5 to 10 times more to transact on Ethereum just to get a faster or smoother experience, will users still want to use it at all? High fees can cancel out performance gains by limiting who can afford to interact with the chain, effectively lowering real-world throughput.

Let’s take a look at the transaction fees from the swap tests above:

• Ethereum: $0.68
• Base: $0.000626 (~1,086x cheaper)
• Arbitrum: $0.25 (2.72x cheaper)
• Solana: $0.01242 (54.75x cheaper)

Clearly, the cost difference is significant. While Ethereum delivers security and decentralization, the higher fees can be a barrier for frequent, everyday transactions.

For testnets like Monad and MegaETH, it’s a bit tricky to compare costs directly, but just for reference:

• Monad: 0.0110315 MON
• MegaETH: 0.000000325948 ETH

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Ethereum

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Base

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Arbitrum

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Solana

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Monad Testnet

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MegaETH Testnet

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While testnet values aren't priced for real-world usage, they give a sense of how cheaply these upcoming networks could operate. If they can maintain both speed and low costs at scale, they may reshape what users expect from a blockchain experience.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article gave you a clearer picture of how blockchain performance has evolved, and why it matters. But while speed is exciting, it’s not the only thing that defines a great blockchain experience.

Speed isn’t the end goal, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. When choosing which blockchain to use, there are other important factors to consider:

• Security, decentralization, and censorship-resistance help ensure the network stays open, trustworthy, and tamper-proof.
• Time-to-finality, how long it takes for a transaction to become irreversible, is another key detail, especially in financial use cases.
• And practical elements like liquidity, app usability, and cross-chain compatibility (interoperability) can make or break the overall experience.

As we enter the era of high-performance blockchains, the winning networks won’t just be the fastest. They’ll be the ones that strike the best balance between speed, cost, reliability, and openness, making blockchain smoother, more accessible, and truly ready for everyday use.