Polygon Block Performance
Question
What is the average time between blocks on Polygon?
What was the maximum and minimum recorded time between two blocks? How many transactions are done in a block on average? How do these numbers compare to L1 such as Flow or Solana, or other L2 such as Arbitrum or Optimism?
Goal
The goal of this dashboard is to compare Polygon Blocks’ performance with the other blockchains’ block performance.
Solution
for having a better understanding of each blockchain block's performance we will calculate the following metrics:
- The average time between blocks
- min and max time between two blocks
- The average transaction count per block
we will compare these L1 and L2 blockchains with Polygon:
- L1 → Solana, Flow, BSC
- L2 → Optimism, Arbitrum
I used the fact_blocks
table in each blockchain database on velocity for querying data.
The timeframe I used to visualize charts is from 2022-06-15 until now because some of the datasets used in this dashboard are lite mode datasets and they have the data after this date.
Block time for each blockchain
The above chart shows the block time for each blockchain on a daily basis. ==Polygon block time is ~2.2 to 2.4 seconds.==
As it shows overall layer 2 blockchains’ block times are fewer than layer 1 blockchains. In layer 1, the fastest block generation time belongs to Solana which sometimes was faster than Arbitrum and Optimism too. Also, Flow block times are fewer than Polygon block times. Just BSC block times are higher than Polygon block times. except for BSC with a constant 3-second block time, other blockchains’ block times had fluctuations. its reason is that BSC block times fluctuations are less than a tenth of a second so we can’t see them in the chart. Blockchains Block time ranking :
- Optimism
- Arbitrum
- Flow
- Polygon
- BSC
- Solana
Average Transaction Count per Block
in the above line chart, we see the average transactions count per block on a daily basis for each blockchain. Solana transaction counts are very higher than others. It’s approximately between 1900 to just above 2000 tx per block while its block time is fewer than other L1 blockchains. here we can understand that Solana is the fastest blockchain because the L2 blockchains average transaction count is about 1 which is very lower than Solana and other blockchains,
Polygon average transactions count per block is fluctuated between ~60 to 90.
another thing that we see is that polygon average transactions count per block are more stable than BSC and Flow because its fluctuation are fewer.
we can easily rank the blockchains by average transactions count per block as follows:
- Solana
- BSC
- Polygon ~60 to 90
- Flow → ~10 to 35
- Arbitrum → ~1
- Optimism → ~1
Min and Max Block Time
I think that the Max block time is an important metric to measure the performance of blocks of a blockchain. because it’s important for me to know how long it takes for a transaction to perform in the worst case. we see that BSC Max and Min Block time difference is very lower than others. after that, we have Polygon, Solana, and Flow respectivPely.
The min Block time shows that if the blocks generating time at the best case. we see that in these situations Polygon with 2 sec outperforms BSC but on other blockchains, Min Block time is lower.
Summary
To summarize the different blockchains’ block performance information I draw the right side chart, here we see that the max block time of Solana is more than others despite the previous chart its reason is that I didn’t limit the time frame for this chart, and use all existed data.
- Polygon ==Max block time== with 25 sec is lower than other blockchains except for BSC. I think it’s a good advantage for polygon because this makes it more reliable.
- The ==Min block time== of Polygon is 2 sec which is higher than other blockchains except BSC.
- So I can say that if the Min block time increases Max block time decrease! higher Min block time cause more reliability.
- Polygon ==Average block time== is 2.2 which is lower than BSC but higher than other blockchains.
- Just BSC and Solana's ==average transaction counts== are more than Polygon's average transactions count (74.82).
Introduction
Blocks
Blocks are where transaction data is stored in a blockchain. Each block has a hash and that hash uniquely identifies the information contained within the block.
Blocks are created by miners (or validators in Proof of Stake) and contain recent transactions. When a valid block is produced, it is propagated throughout the network and each miner adds the block to their copy of the blockchain.
Block time
The average time it takes for the network's nodes to use their hashing (computational) power to solve the current hash and produce a new block is known as block time. It simply refers to the interval between the creation of each new block, which is set by the protocol for the blockchain.
When a block is finished, the data it contains is validated and approved as reliable, enabling the subsequent block to be constructed on top of it.
The processing time for a transaction on a specific blockchain protocol is often referred to as the block time. In principle,
The speed of transactions on a blockchain essentially depends on the block time.