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?

Method

I use the core.fact_blocks table to calculate the minimum, average, and maximum recorded time between 2 blocks as well as the number of transactions per block.
First, I get the block_id and timestamp for each block.
Then, I duplicate the above table but replace block_id = block_id + 1. => In this table, the timestamp of block_id is actually the timestamp of block_id - 1.
Finally, I join table #2 with table #3 on the same block_id. The difference between the 2 timestamp is the recorded time between 2 blocks.

Definition

Recorded time between 2 blocks: This shows how much time has passed between the 2 blocks.

On Polygon, the maximum time is 25 seconds and the minimum time is 2 seconds. It has a daily maximum time between 8 seconds to 25 seconds and a daily minimum time of 2 seconds.

In comparison to other blockchains:

Polygon has the lowest maximum time. Polygon’s maximum time is lower than Flow (90 seconds), Optimism (58 seconds), and Arbitrum (247 seconds). It’s equal to Solana.
Polygon has the highest minimum time. Polgyon’s minimum time (2 seconds) is higher than the other 4 blockchains (less than 1 seconds).

Polygon has an average of 74.9 transactions per block since June 6th. Its daily average number is between 53.84 up to 95.3.

In comparison to other blockchains:

Polygon is the 2nd highest in the number of average transactions per block. It only losses to Solana which has an absurdly high number (2080). It’s higher than Flow (17), Optimism (1), and Arbitrum (1.16).
Similarly, Polygon also ranks 2nd in the daily number.

=> Overall, performance wise, Polygon is better than Flow, Arbitrum, and Optimism and is worse than Solana.

Recorded time between 2 blocks

Average number of transactions per block