Solana suddenly reaches a record processing speed of 100,000 TPS

The Solana network unexpectedly reached a record of 100,000 TPS, but the actual number could be much lower.

Over the past weekend, the Solana network recorded a new transaction processing performance record. According to Mert Mumtaz – co-founder of blockchain infrastructure development company Helius – Solana has become the first large blockchain to reach 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) on mainnet.

In a block recorded on Sunday night, Solana successfully processed 43,016 transactions and had only 50 failed transactions, bringing the total TPS to 107,540 – a number that surprised even the Solana development community.

TPS record mainly comes from "noop" transactions

Notably, most of these transactions were not token exchanges or actual financial transactions, but "noop" (no-operation program calls). These are load testing transactions that do not change the network state and consume almost no computational resources.

Solana requires each transaction to have at least one accompanying command. When no significant operation exists, "noop" is used to fill the gap. Therefore, these sudden TPS numbers do not accurately reflect the actual ability to process payment or decentralized application (dApp) transactions.

Mert Mumtaz emphasized: if converted to more "meaningful" transaction types such as token transfers, oracle updates, or smart contract operations, Solana can still reach 80,000 – 100,000 TPS under ideal conditions.

Solana's actual TPS is much lower

According to data from Solscan, Solana's current TPS fluctuates around 3,700, but about 2/3 of that is validator voting transactions to maintain consensus. If these transactions are removed, the actual TPS is only around 1,000 – 1,050 – which is hundreds of times lower than the recent sudden spike.

The analysis platform Chainspect also confirmed similar data, showing Solana's "actual" TPS is around 1,004.

Memecoin remains the main driver

Despite technological advances, Solana is still best known for the explosion of meme coins. According to Solscan, the Pump.fun platform – specialized in creating and trading meme coins – accounts for 62% of the total TVL of the entire Solana ecosystem.

In parallel, the DeFi sector on Solana is also strongly recovering. The total TVL on Solana has reached $10.7 billion, approaching the record high from January 2025, according to data from defillama.