BFTETH
BnkToTheFuture / Ethereum
crypto

Most of Solana’s TPS is validator voting, not real transactions
If you check Solana stats (like on SolanaView), you’ll see that only \~20–30% of the TPS is actual user activity. The rest — 70–80% — is validator vote transactions.
This isn’t spam or bots — it’s by design. Because of Solana’s Proof of History (PoH) and Tower BFT consensus, validators need to constantly submit on-chain vote transactions to confirm blocks.
That means most of the network’s throughput is used just to maintain consensus, not to process real-world transactions. So when Solana says it can do thousands of TPS, only a fraction of that is usable for apps, DeFi, NFTs, etc.
It’s a built-in inefficiency of the design — fast, but with overhead.

Most of Solana’s TPS is validator voting, not real transactions
If you check Solana stats (like on SolanaView), you’ll see that only \~20–30% of the TPS is actual user activity. The rest — 70–80% — is validator vote transactions.
This isn’t spam or bots — it’s by design. Because of Solana’s Proof of History (PoH) and Tower BFT consensus, validators need to constantly submit on-chain vote transactions to confirm blocks.
That means most of the network’s throughput is used just to maintain consensus, not to process real-world transactions. So when Solana says it can do thousands of TPS, only a fraction of that is usable for apps, DeFi, NFTs, etc.
It’s a built-in inefficiency of the design — fast, but with overhead.