Solana Hits 100,000 TPS in Stress Test

Solana Breaks the 100,000 TPS Barrier

The Solana blockchain has reached a major technical milestone, successfully executing over 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) during a recent stress test on its mainnet. According to Mert Mumtaz, co-founder of Solana tooling firm Helius, this achievement makes Solana the “first major blockchain” to cross the six-figure TPS mark in a live environment. 

A late Sunday block processed 43,016 successful transactions and 50 failed ones, bringing the total throughput to 107,540 TPS. While the figure is groundbreaking, most of these were no-operation program calls (“noop” instructions) — transactions that carry no functional output but are used to test capacity.

Testing the Limits with No-Op Transactions

The noop function is a technique designed to fill blocks with lightweight instructions that stress the system without the risk of complex failures. Developers often use this to benchmark blockchain throughput limits, even though such tests don’t reflect real-world activity like payments, decentralized finance (DeFi), or smart contract interactions.

Despite the impressive numbers, real-world usage shows a stark difference. Data from Solscan suggests Solana currently averages around 3,700 TPS, with nearly two-thirds of those transactions driven by validator votes required for network consensus. This inflates the throughput figures but does not reflect user-driven transactions.

Firedancer and the Road to Higher Performance

The stress test builds on the momentum of Firedancer, a high-performance validator client developed by Jump Crypto. Benchmarks on testnets have demonstrated over 1.2 million TPS, though Firedancer has yet to be deployed on Solana’s mainnet. 

Solana engineers are also developing structural upgrades, such as decoupling consensus from execution and introducing localized fee markets to mitigate congestion. Analysts from Bitwise have praised Solana’s resilience, noting that the chain has shown stability in prior stress tests, reinforcing its potential for high-frequency applications such as trading platforms and gaming ecosystems. 

The gap between theoretical throughput and sustainable performance remains a challenge, but the network’s ability to withstand high stress without collapse suggests room for future scalability.

Validators Vote on Alpenglow Consensus Upgrade

Alongside the stress test, the Solana community is voting on Alpenglow (SIMD-0326), a proposed consensus upgrade aimed at improving both speed and security. The vote began at epoch 840 and will conclude at the end of epoch 842. 

The upgrade would replace the existing TowerBFT protocol with a new mechanism featuring Rotor-based block propagation. If approved, block finalization times could drop by 100–150 milliseconds, reducing latency and boosting transaction confirmations. 

As part of the proposal, validators would need to pay a Validator Admission Ticket (VAT) of 1.6 SOL per epoch. Unlike current rewards, this fee would be burned rather than redistributed, ensuring economic discipline while maintaining validator incentives through block leader rewards.

Paving the Way for Solana’s Future

While the 107,000 TPS milestone demonstrates Solana’s technical design, its real test lies in practical adoption. If upgrades like Firedancer and Alpenglow deliver on their promises, Solana could strengthen its reputation as the go-to blockchain for high-speed, low-cost applications. The stress test has already cemented Solana’s status as a leader in scalability research, but bridging the gap between lab results and everyday use will determine its long-term success.