Solana briefly reached over 100,000 transactions per second in a weekend stress test, raising both excitement and skepticism across the crypto community.
Key Takeaways
- 1Solana recorded a peak of 107,540 TPS, the highest in major blockchain history
- 2Most transactions were “noop” program calls, not actual transfers or trades
- 3Real user-facing TPS remains around 1,000, mainly due to validator vote inflation
- 4The network’s scalability and memecoin dominance continue to spark debate
What Happened?
Solana’s mainnet hit an eye-popping 107,540 transactions per second (TPS) over the weekend, largely driven by a flood of lightweight “noop” program calls. The event marks the highest TPS ever recorded by a major blockchain. However, experts caution that the numbers don’t fully represent real-world activity or sustainable performance.
Solana’s Record TPS: A Technical Milestone
Solana validator “Cavey Cool” processed a block with 43,016 successful and 50 failed transactions, pushing the blockchain to its new TPS peak. This spike was powered by noop (no-operation) program calls, which are required in every transaction but don’t perform any real computation.
These noop calls are commonly used in stress tests to gauge network capacity. While they don’t represent typical activity like token transfers or smart contract execution, they do consume network resources such as signature verification and data loading.
Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz, who helped publicize the event, noted the cost of noop transactions isn’t meaningless. He compared them to low-cost oracle updates rather than spam, suggesting the test still offers valuable insights into the network’s theoretical capabilities.
when we said 1,000,000 TPS ,you didn’t think we were kidding did you?
,mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) August 17, 2025
you are not gonna out engineer solana
first major blockchain with a recorded 100K TPS ***on mainnet***
I’ll also get out infront of the typical reply guys
“but muurt, these are noop program calls, they’re… https://t.co/pibGtbkhJP
Real-World TPS Still Hovers Around 1,000
Despite the milestone, Solana’s real-world TPS is much lower. According to data from Solscan and Chainspect, the actual throughput for genuine user transactions sits between 1,000 and 1,050 TPS. The illusion of higher performance comes from validator vote transactions, which make up about two-thirds of all recorded TPS.
Validators are required to send multiple votes per slot to maintain network consensus. While essential for blockchain operation, these votes do not reflect user activity, such as token swaps, app usage, or financial transactions.
Memecoins Continue to Dominate Solana Activity
Solana’s recent rise in network activity is closely tied to its memecoin ecosystem. The platform Pump.fun, which allows users to mint and trade memecoins, now accounts for 62% of Solana’s total value locked (TVL), according to Solscan.
This shows that while Solana is technically capable of supporting high throughput, the bulk of activity remains focused on speculative trading. The blockchain’s decentralized finance (DeFi) activity has also surged, with total value locked reaching $10.7 billion, nearing its January all-time high.
However, Solana’s native token SOL fell over the weekend amid broader market cooling. It dropped from $208 to $187 and is still down 36% from its January peak of $293, according to CoinGecko.
Scalability Dreams and the Alpenglow Proposal
Developers argue that the stress test offers a preview of what Solana might sustain under real conditions, estimating that the network could theoretically handle 80,000 to 100,000 TPS in operations like transfers or oracle updates.
Further performance improvements could come from the Alpenglow consensus proposal (SIMD-0326), which aims to cut block finality from 12.8 seconds to just 150 milliseconds. The proposal is currently in the community governance stage, with voting set to occur between Epochs 840 and 420. A two-thirds majority will be required for the proposal to pass.
Solana’s new consensus proposal Alpenglow (SIMD-0326) has entered the community governance stage. The protocol aims to reduce block finality from 12.8s to ~150ms. Voting will take place between Epochs 840–420 (current epoch: 834, ~2 days each). The proposal passes if yes votes…
,Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 17, 2025
If successful, Alpenglow could drastically reduce latency, making Solana even more appealing for speed-sensitive applications.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
In my experience, seeing a blockchain touch 107,000 TPS is a major technical feat, but let’s not get carried away. Real usage matters far more than theoretical peaks. The fact that Solana’s actual performance remains around 1,000 TPS tells us there’s still a gap between engineering potential and real-world adoption. That said, I found the Alpenglow proposal very promising. If they can reduce finality to 150 milliseconds, we could finally see performance gains that actually benefit users, not just metrics. For now, though, Solana is fast but not fully utilized, and mostly driven by memecoins. We’ll need to watch closely how it evolves from here.
