Every week, another L1 or L2 launches with the same claim: “We can process 100,000 transactions per second!”

Sometimes it’s 50,000. Sometimes it’s 1 million.

The specific number doesn’t matter because it’s almost always bullshit.

The Transaction Speed D**k-Measuring Contest

The scalability wars have devolved into crypto’s most embarrassing contest. Each new protocol must claim higher TPS than the last, regardless of whether those speeds are:

• Actually achievable outside their AWS testnet (spoiler: they’re not)
• Meaningful for any real-world application
• Necessary for anything humans would actually use

This obsession with throughput is crypto’s version of daily driving a Lambo through rush hour. Specs aren’t the problem, context is.

Let’s Talk Real Numbers

Visa, the global payments behemoth handling transactions for literally billions of people, processes about 1,700 transactions per second on average. Their theoretical maximum is around 24,000 TPS, but they’ve never needed that capacity in decades of operation.

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

If your Discord has more emoji reactions than your chain has transactions, you might be solving an imaginary problem.

The Hidden Costs of Size Queen Scalability

An obsession with theoretical throughput creates real-world problems that hurt users.

First, there’s centralization in disguise: chasing high TPS often means sacrificing decentralization for the sake of a marketing number.

Then comes security theater: in the rush to scale, corners are cut, creating vulnerabilities that will eventually lead to exploits.

Next is engineer brain drain: instead of building things users actually need, top talent is stuck optimizing for synthetic benchmarks.

And finally, outright deception: networks promote lab numbers that collapse under real-world conditions.

The Uncomfortable Truth

The obsession with extreme scalability exists for two reasons:

• You need impressive-sounding tech to justify your $100M raise
• You’re desperately trying to differentiate your blockchain in a market with 5000+ other options

User needs are an afterthought. The real play is making retail believe you’re the endgame - with VCs backing your TPS narrative as your loudest KOLs.

Building Something That Matters

If you’re actually building in this space, here’s your reality check:

• Focus on making something that wouldn’t exist without blockchain
• Design economics that don’t require new suckers to buy in every month
• Create interfaces that don’t make normal humans want to break their laptops
• Build at the scale your actual use case requires, not what sounds impressive in a pitch deck

The Scalability Reality Check

The next time a project boasts about processing 500,000 TPS, ask: “What are all those transactions actually doing? Who’s generating them? For what purpose?”

When they start mumbling about “future adoption” and “web3 social” you’ll have your answer.

Real innovation isn’t about theoretical performance in a vacuum. It’s about building something people actually need, at a scale appropriate for that need.

Everything else is just expensive performance art masquerading as technology.

I was having a dull Sunday and needed some spice, so here’s a truth bomb no one asked for ;)

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