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L1 and L2 are vying to claim ultra-high TPS. Is the demand really about speed?

By: blockbeats|2025/04/14 13:45:03
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Original Article Title: The Great TPS Lie: Crypto's Obsession With Solving Problems Nobody Has
Original Article Author: @therosieum, @tenprotocol Member
Original Article Translation: Diodeep

Editor's Note: The article criticizes the crypto industry's blind pursuit of high TPS (transactions per second), arguing that this race is based on false advertising and overlooks real user needs. Projects, in order to attract funding and attention, exaggerate lab data, sacrificing decentralization, security, and usability to solve often irrelevant problems. The author calls for a focus on genuinely meaningful blockchain applications, building according to actual use case scales, rather than chasing unrealistic digital fantasies.

The following is the original content (reorganized for ease of understanding):

Every week, a new L1 or L2 project goes live, claiming: "We can process 100,000 transactions per second!"

Sometimes it's 50,000 transactions, sometimes it's 1 million.

The exact number doesn't matter because it's all mostly nonsense.

The "Faster Than Thou" Race of Transaction Speed

The scalability war has devolved into crypto's most embarrassing showdown. Every new protocol must claim a higher TPS than the previous one, regardless of whether these speeds are:

· Achievable beyond their AWS testnet (spoiler: it's almost impossible)

· Meaningful for real-world applications

· Necessary for scenarios used by actual humans

This obsession with throughput is like the crypto world taking a Lamborghini for a joyride during rush hour. The problem isn't with the specs but with the context.

Talking About Real Data

Visa, the payment giant that processes transactions for billions of people globally, averages around 1,700 transactions per second. Their theoretical maximum is around 24,000 TPS, but they have never needed this capacity in decades of operation.

Meanwhile, most blockchain projects struggle to attract even 100 daily active users.

If your Discord emojis outnumber your on-chain transactions, you might be solving a problem that exists only in your imagination.

The Hidden Cost of Chasing "Blockchain Scalability Trilemma"

The obsession with theoretical throughput can lead to real-world issues that harm users.

Firstly, there is the disguised centralization: In pursuit of high TPS, decentralization is often sacrificed for the sake of a marketing number.

Secondly, there is security theater: Cutting corners in hasty scaling introduces vulnerabilities that will sooner or later be exploited.

Furthermore, there is engineering talent drain: Top talent is not building what users really need but instead is stuck optimizing synthetic benchmarks.

Lastly, there is blatant deception: Network propaganda's lab numbers crumble under real-world conditions.

The Unsettling Truth

There are two reasons for the obsession with extreme scalability:

· You need to sound tech-savvy to justify your $100M funding

· You desperately want your chain to stand out in a market of over 5000 blockchains

User needs are only an afterthought. The real game is to make retail investors believe you are the ultimate solution—VCs then act as the loudest KOLs for your TPS narrative.

L1 and L2 are vying to claim ultra-high TPS. Is the demand really about speed?

Building Something Truly Meaningful

If you are really building something in this space, here's a reality check:

· Focus on building things only achievable with blockchain

· Design an economic model that doesn't require monthly rug pulls for user acquisition

· Create a user interface that doesn't make regular people want to smash their computers

· Build to the scale of actual use cases, not for the sake of a flashy pitch deck

Scalability Reality Check

Next time a project boasts about handling 500,000 TPS, ask them: "What are these transactions actually doing? Who is generating them? For what purpose?"

When they stutter about "future adoption" and "web3 social," you'll know the answer.

True innovation isn't theoretical performance in a vacuum; it's about building what people truly need and scaling appropriately to demand.

Everything else is just expensive performance art disguised as technology.

「Original Post Link」

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