Blockchain Analyst Accuses Solana, Cardano of Falsifying TPS Figures

Cyber Capital’s founder, Justin Bons, has accused Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) of misleading investors by publishing “fake” transaction per second (TPS) metrics. According to Bons, Solana is misleading the public by a 6.5 factor, while Cardano is doing the same by a 26.5 factor.

Bons accused Solana and Cardano of ignoring the industry standards for calculating TPS, with their theoretical figures of 10,000 TPS and 18 TPS for SOL and ADA, respectively. The Cyber Capital founder thinks SOL’s TPS value is 739, while ADA’s is 0.4.

Meanwhile, Bons claimed massive discrepancies in the widely publicized maximum TPS for Solana and Cardano. According to the research analyst, claims of 65,000 maximum TPS for SOL and 477 for ADA cannot be accurate. He shared figures from both protocols, suggesting the publicized figures are incorrect.

Bons supported his argument with calculations that reduced SOL’s theoretical TPS to approximately 50,000. He cited cryptographic limitations as bottlenecks that reduce the protocols’ TPS. According to Bons, EDDSA verification seems to be the lowest bottleneck. He also noted failed transactions as a bottleneck that limits SOL’s maximum theoretical TPS to 10,000.

Meanwhile, Bons accused Cardano of counting multiple outputs as separate transactions. Hence, the significantly high TPS figures. According to the researcher, almost all other chains can batch transactions without additional costs, yet none do so, considering it is not an ‌accepted industry practice. 

For instance, he noted Bitcoin could do the same using Schnorr signatures, claiming over 400 TPS. Bons thinks the crypto industry can accept Cardano’s batching-influenced TPS figures if it applies the same standard to all the chains, considering it could improve TPS figures by approximately 20x across the board.