Question:

Flow is fast, but how fast?

6 months ago, we asked for a comparative analysis on blockchain speed - how has Flow increased its speed in transaction per minute since? Compare Flow and other L1 blockchains in terms of speed: identify the monthly average for transactions per minute, and how that's improved or worsened since the beginning of 2022.

• What types of events have raised or decreased the blockchain's performance over that time period?
• Are there bursts of transaction volume or interest on the chain? Compare Flow's speed to at least two other blockchains.

Overview of analysis:

This investigation aims to identify the speed of Flow network and compare it with other blockchains:

• Transactions and speed comparison
• Detailed analysis on Flow blockchain

About Flow:

Flow Dapper protocol is a new blockchain for the next generation of applications, games and digital assets. It is a fast, secure and convenient protocol for blockchain developers. FlowDepper is designed to expand scalability without the need for sharding and process transactions quickly and at low cost, which is perfect for decentralized applications (Dapps) such as NFT markets and blockchain games. Flow was developed by Dapper Labs, which aims to solve the congestion problem of blockchain for games and interactive applications. Depper now uses Flow for all of his projects, such as NBA Top Shot; But other developers can also work on it.

Flow uses a Proof-of-Stake (POS) consensus algorithm, which requires validators or approvers of transactions to stake a certain number of FLOW tokens in order to participate in the network.

The working method of Validators is also different from other blockchains. The Flow network has divided the tasks of the approvers into four different types of nodes; Consensus, Verification, Execution and Collection. All these nodes participate in confirming each transaction.

Speed of blockchains:

Blockchains are unique, but each of them faces similar problems. Blockchain scalability is the most important challenge of each of them. Whenever blockchain scalability is discussed, technical specifications such as blockchain transaction speed are considered. Transaction speed is the speed of data transfer from one account to another. The faster the transaction is confirmed, the better the transaction speed. The transaction speed of a blockchain is one of the main parameters through which the durability and efficiency of a blockchain is measured.

The transaction speed in the blockchain in turn depends on many other factors such as block size, block time, network traffic, transaction fees, and more. Transaction speed should not be confused with block time. Transaction speed measures how quickly a transaction is settled and confirmed. But the block time is a fixed number.

Flow Dapper is based on a unique and multipurpose architecture. Because its architecture does not require the use of sharding for scalability, it allows massive upgrades to be implemented quickly on it.

Methodology:

• The data provided by Flipside has been used to handle this analysis. To handle this investigation the following steps have been passed as below:
• Transactions and speed comparison
  • Used table→ blockchain.fact_transactions
  • Networks→ Flow, Ethereum, Osmosis and Avalanche
  • Metrics→ Transaction per minute and second, Transaction per block and wallet, Count of transactions and wallets, Success rate of each chain
• Detailed investigation on Flow
  • Top Events on Flow since January
  • Failure rate of top Events on Flow
  • Transfer volume in USD and comparison of it with TPM of network

The parameters related to time basis and selection of TPM and TPS are set by reader and by default the weekly basis and TPM have been chosen for this analysis.

Part 1: Transactions and speed comparison

Part 2: Deep analysis on Flow

Findings:

• The Ethereum network has the highest count of transactions and active wallets among selected blockchain and as can be seen, the Flow network stands in the second rank.
• Also, the transaction per block has been dominated y Ethereum network and Also, the Flow network has the highest count of average transaction per wallets among selected blockchains.
• The count of transactions and active wallets on Flow network has been passed Ethereum network sometimes.

Findings:

• The Ethereum network has the highest weekly average transaction per minute among selected networks and Also, the Flow blockchain stands on the second rank based on weekly average TPM.
• The average TPM over time reveals that the comparison is between Ethereum and Flow networks and on the recent days, the Flow chain has been passed the weekly average TPM of networks.
• The success rate comparison against the selected blockchains demonstrated that the Ethereum network has consistent attitude on succeeded transactions and after that the Flow network stands.
• The success rate of Flow decreased since the last week of October.

Findings:

• The top events on Flow blockchain with the highest count of transactions are TokenDeposit, TokenWithdrawn and FeesDeducted.
• The over time investigation reveals that the FeesDeducted event has increasing trend by count of transactions.
• The highest failure rate of top events on Flow blockchain belong to FeesDeducted event and the last week of May, 2022 has the highest failure rate with over 45% of transactions and the main reason of that is the congestion of network due to the sudden drop of general crypto market.
• The volume of transfer in USD on Flow network compared to TPM of this chains shown that these parameters have negative correlation and by increasing the volume of transfer, the TPM of network decreased accordingly.

Conclusion:

• How does blockchain increase speed?

  Blockchain has the potential to improve transaction speed because the technology removes many unnecessary intermediaries from the equation. The shorter the supply chain, the fewer unnecessary transactions, and as a result, transactions are approved and completed faster.

• The outcomes related to the previous parts reveals that the Flow network has acceptable performance for transactions speed and sometimes take the first rank among these selected networks.

Useful links:

• Flow Blockchain
• Transaction speed of networks

Author:

Credited by MZG

Discord handle: m.zamani#0361

Twitter handle: @GargariZamani