Introduction

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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?

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For this bounty we’ll be finding a few metrics from Polygon and pitting them against the mentioned Layer 1 and 2 chains, being Flow, Solana, Arbitrum, and Optimism. We’ll be comparing their block time speeds and their minimum as well as maximum time between two recorded blocks. Block speeds are important as it shows how fast or slow a network is when processing or confirming transactions. A lower block speed = faster transactions. A lot of L1 chains like Ethereum have high block times which causes slowdowns in the network due to congestions of high traffic.

Naturally we’re starting with Polygon and using it as a baseline to compare. I’ll be providing all the data and surmising everything at the bottom towards the conclusion.

Note: All of our numbers here and below are measured in seconds.

Conclusion And Findings

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• We found Solana to have the fastest block time from all these chains with a 0.669 second average block time
• We also found Solana to have the highest average transactions per block, sitting at 1750 transactions per block, significantly higher than everything else
• Our minimum time between blocks were shared between Flow, Arbitrum, Solana, and Optimism at 0 seconds. Only Polygon was excluded at 2 seconds
• Our max time between blocks runs up to Flow with its massive 52,774 second time between blocks, or 14.6 hours. A large congestion happened here
• Optimism is interesting, as according to their documents, they technically have blocks but each block can only contain 1 transaction, which is what leads to the 1 average transaction per block, low time between blocks, and relatively low maximum time between blocks

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If we look at the L1s, being Flow and Solana, Polygon is relatively healthier when we compare them. Solana does have the lowest time between blocks, but it does have the highest transactions per block so it is necessary to prevent blockage or congestion. However due to the high transactions, as well as knowing a high rate of these transactions are performed by bots, when congestion happens it can get really bad as we see with the 16,000 second time between blocks. This also extends to Flow as it shows the extreme congestion and higher transaction rate per block, but to lesser extent and ratios as Solana, with twice as long of a time between blocks.

And if we look to the L2s, of Arbitrum and Optimism, we see somewhat worse results for Polygon (as it too is an L2) where Arbitrum and Optimism have shorter times between blocks as well as only having about 1 transaction per block, while Polygon has 75. This doesn’t necessarily signal a negative for Polygon’s chain, just a different way the two chains operate. However Arbitrum also suffered a high congestion with its maximum time recorded at 23,400 seconds.

Overall there is no black and white in comparing the times recorded for each chain’s blocks. There’s more to the story in comparing each network’s block metrics, and Polygon seems to be relatively healthy with its 2.25s average between blocks and no sign of congestion as its recorded maximum is 166 seconds, which is fine when considering the 75 transaction average of each block.