Solana TPS "Fake"?

Original author: @Justin_Bons

Original translation: Peisen, BlockBeats

The two biggest typical representatives of "fake" TPS indicators are Solana and ADA: Solana misled investors 6.5 times, while ADA misled investors 26.5 times. With both guilty of ignoring industry standards for TPS, it’s time to break down the numbers and separate truth from fiction:

First, here are the facts as they stand:

· Solana’s maximum theoretical TPS is 10,000; ADA’s maximum theoretical TPS is 18

· Solana’s current real-world TPS is 739; ADA’s current real-world TPS is 0.4

Depending on who you ask, you’ll get wildly different answers: some claim Solana’s maximum theoretical TPS is 65,000, while others claim ADA’s maximum theoretical TPS is 477.

There’s a huge discrepancy here, and something needs to be given in order to find the truth, because neither of them can be true. As explorers give us very different numbers:

First, we have to separate the usage metric from the maximum theoretical capacity metric. Starting with Solana’s maximum theoretical capacity: Solana’s computation limit is 48M CUs per block, and a basic 1-to-1 TX requires 450 CUs; so, at a 0.4 second block time: 48M÷450= 106k÷0.4 = 266K TPS.

However, in Solana’s case, we cannot take this limit at face value. Due to other cryptographic limits, the actual bottleneck is significantly lower, and now the lowest bottleneck seems to be EDDSA validation, which brings the maximum theoretical TPS down to about 50K.

@bw_solana identified these bottlenecks; ~250k TPS data ingestion, ~125k TPS signature verification @hdd_edy pointed out the ~30k limit for EDDSA, and then @mrJackLevin raised it to ~50k. Given the ~50k bottleneck, we deducted voting TXs (75%) and "failed" TXs (10%).

It would be unfair to deduct “failed” TXs without impacting users, as they are doomed to fail and pay fees. However, for the sake of argument, it is still deducted, giving Solana a maximum theoretical TPS of 10,000.

Now let’s look at ADA’s maximum theoretical capacity: the block size limit is 90,112 bytes, and the basic 1-to-1 TX is 250 bytes; therefore, at a 20 second block time: 90112÷20 = 4505÷250 = 18 TPS. We’ll take this at face value, as there is no lower bottleneck than this.

One of the misleading parties is http:// eutxo.org, as he provides shockingly "false" TPS numbers, almost all other explorers outside of ADA report correct TPS numbers, such as http:// chainspect.app, which has a consistent and comparable TPS metric.

So why does ADA claim to have 26x more capacity than it probably has? (Compared to Solana's 6x) This is because ADA counts multiple outputs as separate TXs.

Almost all other chains are able to batch sends without increasing the cost. Yet, nobody actually counts it in TPS, even BTC can do this with Schnorr signatures, yet nobody seems to claim BTC can do 400+ TPS?

Batching is a great feature expected on all modern chains, and I’m not even against including it as long as we do it consistently (x20 TPS for all chains to accommodate ADA) However, at this point it would make more sense to invent a new term, like “outputs per second”. Since batching doesn’t scale with the number of users, it only scales with the number of TXs.

Since all outputs still come from the same private key (it just scales with custodians), this is where the TPS and “OPS” metrics could be valuable. Just like how “Exchanges per Second” is a new metric that measures capacity in a more nuanced way. However, this is why saying ADA has such a high theoretical maximum TPS is misleading, after all it is far from the truth.

This is all particularly ironic after ADA’s community constantly attacked Solana’s metrics. Because in ADA, the disparity between what is claimed and reality is greater than in Solana. They use the exact same TPS methodology, even after deducting consensus and failed TXs.

Now let’s look at current usage, starting with Solana:

The raw TPS numbers can be misleading because they include consensus information, which is why we should deduct for that, 3654-2740= 914x0.90= 822 TPS, I also deducted failed TXs purely for the sake of argument

This is why wider adoption of the “real TPS” metric is such a positive development for Solana, representing a significant departure from previous eras. This is expressed in a more misleading way, as right now, most Solana explorers show “True TPS”.

When it comes to current ADA usage, we can again take the 0.4 TPS at face value as there is no reason to calculate it differently. The fact is, almost no one is using ADA, and that is what TPS represents, as most other cryptocurrencies have far more usage than ADA.

Capacity and scalability are two different things, at least in computer science. We may be able to view ADA more favorably from this perspective: Since scalability is about comparing node requirements to capacity, however, since Solana has 555x more capacity, this is not a fair comparison. Even though the difference in hosting costs for ADA’s low node requirements and Solana’s high node requirements is not even close to this capacity gap.

Technically, this makes Solana more "scalable" than ADA, even if that's an unfair comparison since ADA doesn't even seem to be trying. After speaking with the community, they seem to think that when usage comes, they can increase capacity. However, my position is that if they keep capacity low, usage will never come, which is why ADA has failed to attract more usage!

ADA has missed wave after wave of adoption for this reason. As a critic, I am trying to save a large community from becoming increasingly irrelevant as the ADA community has become highly closed and hostile to outside critics, so please don't blame me as the messenger.

Because I am a neutral party, there will be many people who will accuse me of my motives, but I have never accepted any form of compensation, never accepted a token allocation, and never even accepted an advisory position, giving up millions of dollars to keep my credibility intact. The investment company I belong to, Cyber Capital, can convert its entire SOL position to an ADA position if it sees fit.

ADA clearly has a large community that does care about decentralization. The sincere disagreement should come from the modular vs. monolithic debate because ADA ignores L1 scaling. ADA should focus more on L1 scaling, and the current maximum capacity of 18 TPS prevents builders outside of ADA from joining. Despite Solana outages, node centralization, and past lies, the market still chooses Solana with 10,000 TPS capacity. ADA has a painful lesson.

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