Blockchains have historically been notoriously limited in the volume of transactions they can process. In 2016 and 2017, Bitcoin was the subject of a ferocious scaling debate due to its ability to support just a few transactions per second (tx/s). That debate resulted in the controversial BCash fork, while the Bitcoin Core chain has since implemented SegWit, enabling greater throughput and off-chain transactions via the Lightning Network.

Still, few blockchains can support even a few dozen tx/s on-chain, and none have come remotely close to the 24,000 tx/s capability claimed by Visa (though Visa’s regular throughput is more like 2,000 tx/s). Numerous projects have boasted that they will enable enormous transaction volumes, but these are still in development. What counts is not theory, it is real-world results. Now, Waves is set to post some very impressive results after an extremely promising test by Marc Jansen:

‘I just pushed 100k transfers through the #wavesplatform TESTNET. About 4892 transfers per second. Proof? Check blocks 354731-354734. A detailled report will follow after i reproduced the experiment on MAINNET!’

Approaching 5,000 tx/s – and that’s before any further optimisation, and before off-chain scaling is implemented.

It needs to be stated that testnet transactions are not the same as mainnet use, just as any other tests carried out in the lab typically cannot be replicated in the real world, where variables cannot be so easily controlled. Nevertheless, we await the results of the mainnet stress test with interest!

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