What is Flow Blockchain?

Flow is a blockchain platform that originally was designed for gaming purposes, but has expanded since its launch in 2020. The flow blockchain enables fast, low-cost transactions and supports smart contracts. Flow is a proof of stake blockchain designed to be the foundation of Web3 and the open metaverse, supporting consumer-scale decentralized applications, NFTs, DeFi, DAOs, PFP projects, and more.

Transactions Speed

The transaction speed of a blockchain is one of the prime parameters through which viability of a blockchain is gauged. Transaction speed is the rate at which data is transferred from one account to another. The faster a transaction is confirmed, the better the transaction speed is said to be.

Transaction speed in turn hinges upon numerous other factors like block size, block time, traffic on the network, transaction fees, etc.

The common indicator for determining the speed of transactions in a blockchain is the number of transactions performed (Succeeded and Failed) per minute.

Methodology

In this dashboard, I am going to compare Flow vs some other L1 blockchains (Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Avalanche) in terms of transaction speed and performance over the past months since the start of the year 2022.

One of the main goals is to see how blockchains (especially Flow) performance and their transactions’ speed have been evaluated over time.

Firstly I am going to analyze the number of transactions and TPM and TPS of each chain and also their success rate over time.

Then, I am going to analyze the emitted events by Flow transactions over time and see which events has affected the blockchain performance more than others.

Then, I am going to analyze the volume of transactions on Flow blockchain over time and see how it have changed over time.

For this bounty, The main tables that I am going to use are core.fact_transactions of each chain (for speed comparison), flow.core.fact_events (for events analysis) and flow.core.ez_token_transfers (for volume analysis)

Also, I have excluded Current_Date from the results (in total, daily, weekly and monthly timespans) because the data are not complete yet and can gives us incorrect results.

According to the above charts, among these analysed chains, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) has by far the highest transactions activity during the past year but we can also see its heavy decreasing trend as time goes on over time.

The interesting thing on these charts is significant evolution of FLOW chain transactions over time to to extent that it has totally overtaken Avalanche chain after May (Terra collapse).

On the above charts, we can see the success rate of transactions on these blockchains over time. As we see, in majority of days, Ethereum chain has the highest success rate and Binance Smart Chain and Avalanche are on the next ranks.

We can kinda say that Flow is performing worse than all other chains in terms of number of successful transactions over time and we can see some high spikes of failed transactions especially during market volatile timespans such as May and November over time. But anyway, despite these high spikes of transactions failure, we can also see some days that Flow has the highest (1st rank) of transactions success rate among these blockchains.

And on the above charts, we can see the average, median, minimum and maximum of transactions number and also TPM and TPS of these blockchains in daily, weekly and monthly basis.

As mentioned earlier, we can see Flow is on the 3rd rank in most of the charts after Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum blockchains and higher than Avalanche.

The interesting thing is that in the maximum charts, Flow is above Ethereum !

On the above charts, I have calculated the % change ratio of transactions on these chains compared to their situation during the first days or weeks or months of the year 2022.

The interesting thing is that FLOW is the only blockchain that has by far the highest positive % change ratio among these blockchains.

We can see Binance Smar Chain, Ethereumd and especially Avalanche have experienced decrease in their number of transactions (+ TPM & TPS) compared to the start of the year 2022 but FLOW blockchain has performed satisfying among these chains and has by far the highest positive evolution over time which is increasing more and more as time goes on.

According to the left charts, we can kinda see an decreasing trenf of transactions volume on Flow chain over time.

This high decline in volume of transactions can be mainly because of the whole cryptocurrency market bearish situation and also the crash of several projects such as Terra and FTX during this year and also the bankruptcy of several crypto-related companies + whole world inflation situation and the increasing interest rate (by federal reserve) over time (+ so many other reasons).

all of these factors have caused the decreasing volume of FLOW transactions on this chain over time despite its increasing number of transactions.

The highest volume of FLOW transactions were done within the first months of the year 2022 but as time goes on, the average and total daily volume of transactions decreasing over time and also the high spikes are lower than the high spikes during the first months.

There are only 3 events that have failure rate in FLOW blockchain. all transactions that have emitted events except these 3 (FeesDeducated, TokensDeposited and TokensWithdrawn) were successful on Flow chain.

Also, we can see more than 50% of failed transactions belong to the FeesDeducated event and the other 50% belong to the TokensDepositoed and TokensWithdrawn with almost equal share.

Moreover on the over-time chart, we can see the highest failure rate of these transactions during the month May and also with some high failed transactions during November (the 2 months that two of the greatest crashes in the cryptocurrency history have occurred)

On the left chart, we can see FeesDeducated, TokensWithdrawn and TokensDeposited have by far the highest share in emitted events on Flow chain. these 3 events almost consist 60% of all emitted events on Flow blockchain since the start of the year 2022.

So, we can say events which are related to token transfers and also their fee-related transactions have the greatest impact on Flow chain’s speed.

And on the above charts, we can see share of emitted events on Flow blockchain over time. As mentioned earlier, 3 major events of the Flow blockchain are TokensWithdrawn, TokensDeposited and FeesDeducated.

The main activity of FeesDeducated event has started since April 2022 and before that there was no FeesDeducated event emitted on Flow chain.

There are also other events such as Deposit, Withdraw, JoyrideMultiToken, PlayerTransaction and FinalzeTransaction which are listed among the top emitted events on Flow blockhain over time.

Summary and Conclusion

According to the above analysis:

The speed of transactions on the FLOW blockchain has increased way more than other analyzed chains (Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum and Avalanche) and we have seen Flow was the only chain that its number of transactions (+TPM and TPS) has increased compared to the first days of the year 2022. all other chains have experienced decline in their transactions compared to their performance during the early-2022.

Binance Smart Chain has the highest number of daily and minutely and secondly transactions compared to the other chains and Flow is on the 3rd rank after Ethereum and Higher than Avalanche.

Transactions volume on Flow blockchain has kinda decreased compared to the early days of the year 2022 and this can be mainly because of the market bearish situation and price drop of several tokens especially FLOW as the main native token of the Flow chain.

token and transfer-related events such as TokensWithdrawn, TokensDeposited and FeesDeducated have the highest share on Flow blockchain among other type of events and this can be concluded that these events have the highest impact on the Flow blockchain’s performance.

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Flow Transactions Volume

Since every transaction that an asset is being transferred within it, generates also a ‘transfer’ event on the Flow chain, I have used flow.core.ez_token_transfers to analyze the evolution of transactions volume on Flow chain over time.

Moreover, since there are several currencies on this chart, I have used flow.core.fact_prices in order to calculate and extract the USD value of transfers.

Flow Events

Good To Know About Flow …

Critical Traits of Flow Blockchain

Flow blockchain aims to address many prominent issues in existing blockchain networks. Therefore, you can find some noticeable highlights in the fundamentals of Flow blockchain, which set it apart from other blockchain networks. Here are the four crucial traits of Flow blockchain.

• Multi-role architecture
• Resource-oriented programming 
• Consumer onboarding
• Developer ergonomics

The multi-role architecture is one of the important highlights in Flow blockchain basics. It helps in easier scaling without sharding or compromising with decentralization of consensus. 

Resource-oriented programming is clearly evident in the facility for writing smart contracts on flow in the Cadence programming language. Cadence offers a simpler, safer, and easier programming language aimed at crypto apps and assets. 

Flow blockchain has been tailored for the general customer, and functionalities such as payment onramps offer efficient, low-friction, and secure transition from fiat towards crypto.

Another important trait you could discover in a Flow blockchain refers to developer ergonomics. Flow blockchain has been tailored for everything developers need, such as in-built logging support, upgradeable smart contracts, and many more. Therefore, developers have a lot of opportunities to create new applications with Flow blockchain. 

Value Benefits of Flow Blockchain

Flow blockchain network has been tailored to address the congestion problem of existing blockchain networks. The features of blockchain are unique and play distinct roles in its functioning, thereby ensuring prolific value benefits. Let us find out how Flow blockchain is different by diving deeper into its structure and features in this Flow blockchain guide.

Multi-Node Architecture

The problem with traditional blockchain networks is the massive burden on each node. Every node has to store the complete state of the ledger alongside carrying out all tasks related to the processing of all transactions in the chain. Flow aims to solve this problem with the implementation of pipelining for blockchain networks to divide tasks of validator nodes. Therefore, Flow blockchain basics focus on the use of four different nodes such as,

• Collection Node
• Consensus Node
• Execution Node
• Verification Node

It is also interesting to note that this multi-node architecture in Flow blockchain clearly shows the separation of labor. Now, the separation of labor among nodes has been distributed throughout the various validation stages in each transaction. You must observe that the tasks are not distributed horizontally, like in sharding. Basically, the fundamentals of Flow blockchain imply that each validator node participates in validating every transaction, albeit at only one of the stages of validation. As a result, each node could specialize in its task, thereby ensuring improved efficiency. 

Flow blockchain could offer considerable improvements in scalability with better throughput and lower cost through a shared execution environment. Smart contracts and user accounts could always interact with one another with ACID (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durable) compliance. As a result, Flow can ensure a better user experience alongside enabling developers to build on the works of each other.

Multi-role Functionality

The most crucial highlight in a Flow blockchain guide refers to the important functions of all nodes in its architecture. Flow blockchain helps in pipelining the work of blockchain miners or validators across different roles. Each miner or validator must have some stakes in the network, thereby separating concerns for a significant reduction in redundant efforts. What are the roles of the individual nodes?

• Consensus nodes help in decisions on the presence and order of transactions on the blockchain.
• Verification nodes take care of maintaining and supervising the execution nodes.
• Execution nodes, as the name implies, are responsible for the computation work related to every transaction.
• Collection nodes are involved in improving the data availability and network connectivity for decentralized apps. 

Interestingly, the design of Flow ensures that a single node could penalize and trigger recovery from invalid data brought by malicious Execution or Collection nodes. Flow blockchain basics suggest that the consensus and verification nodes take care of security by leveraging crypto-economic incentives to foster network-wide accountability. 

The consensus nodes use a proof of stake algorithm. Consensus and verification nodes could also ensure network optimization for desired levels of decentralization and security. Furthermore, Consensus and Verification nodes also allow increased levels of participation in the Flow blockchain network. 

Execution and collection nodes are responsible for carrying out the major share of deterministic work, thereby limiting their vulnerabilities. Other node types verify the work of execution and collection nodes while holding them accountable. So, it is safe to ensure proper optimization of execution and collection nodes for better scalability and security. The operations of such nodes would need dedicated server hardware in professionally managed data centers.