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- Mert Mumtaz has revealed that the Solana network achieved a throughput of 107,540 TPS during a stress test.
- This underscores Solana’s architecture, as it becomes a hotspot for meme coins like BONK, WIF, and MEW.
This weekend, Solana (SOL) set a new benchmark for blockchain performance: reaching 107,540 transactions per second (TPS) in a single block during a stress test. Mert Mumtaz, co-founder of developer platform Helius, hailed it as the first time a blockchain reached six-figure TPS on its mainnet.
The block contained 43,016 successful transactions and 50 failures, a stark illustration of the network’s potential, he said, “you are not gonna out-engineer Solana.”
Crucially, most of the TPS spike was driven by “no-operation” (noop) program calls, tiny, meaningless instructions used solely to stress-test capacity. They don’t move tokens, trigger smart contract logic, or update state, but they fulfill the requirement that every transaction must include at least one instruction.
Still, Mumtaz suggested that this test hints at the network’s theoretical capability to eventually handle 80,000–100,000 TPS for practical use cases like token transfers or oracle updates.
The record-breaking doesn’t reflect day-to-day reality. Solscan reports a total TPS of around 3,700, but this number is inflated by vote transactions from validators submitting consensus data. Stripping out vote-related traffic reveals a more realistic throughput of about 1,050 TPS or 1,004 TPS.
While the spike demonstrates the sheer architectural strength of Solana, thanks in part to its Proof-of-History (PoH) mechanism, factors like complex smart contract logic, user traffic, and ecosystem diversity constrain true capacity for real-world operations.
Memecoins, DeFi, and Real-World Assets
Interestingly, much of Solana’s day-to-day traffic doesn’t come from DeFi heavyweights or institutional use cases yet, but from memecoins. Platforms like Pump. fun dominate activity, accounting for around 62% of the chain’s total value locked (TVL). Beyond memes, though, Solana’s DeFi sector is thriving: its TVL surged 30.4% in Q2 to reach $8.6 billion, which has since climbed to $10.4 billion.
According to our latest report on Solana’s performance, Solana is also becoming a hub for real-world asset tokenization, closing Q2 with $390.6 million in tokenized assets, a massive 124.8% increase since the start of the year. The stablecoin ecosystem on Solana is also growing fast, with $11.06 billion in market cap, while the chain itself now holds a $97 billion market cap.
On the protocol side, Solana validators are currently voting on SIMD-0326, an upgrade that could replace the existing TowerBFT consensus with a new system called Alpenglow. If passed, block finality could drop from the current 12.8 seconds down to just 100–150 milliseconds, essentially Web2-level performance for a blockchain.
Regulatory pressure is still in play. The U.S. SEC has hit pause once more on Solana Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) applications, pushing decisions on the Bitwise and 21Shares filings to October 16. Proposals from heavyweights like Grayscale and Fidelity are also waiting in the wings, underscoring the agency’s cautious approach.
On the market side, Solana’s volatility remains in full swing. Earlier, on August 14, SOL peaked at $209, its highest level this month. But as of today, the token has slipped to $180, marking a 5.86% drop over the last 24 hours. Despite the pullback, trading activity is heating up, with volume spiking 45% to $5.16 billion.
The big question now is whether SOL can make another run at its January all-time high of $294. With upgrades in the pipeline and a Solana ETF approval, that scenario is starting to look less like a dream.
