Solana Ecosystem Latency Made Faster by QuickNode Infrastructure

2021 was a massive year for Miami-based crypto startup QuickNode. The startup with ambitions to dominate the blockchain space, by providing infrastructure solutions to leading companies across many industries, successfully raised $35million in a round led by Tiger Global Management. This followed a $10 million fundraising round from investors like Softbank. The crypto company intends to use these funds to grow fast, a must following its 20X revenue growth in 2021.

QuickNode, which serves non native blockchain firms like Atari and Paypal, to big blockchain companies like OpenSea, ChainLink and PancakeSwap, gives them access to build dApps like exchanges and write to blockchains for NFTs.

According to co-founder, Auston Bunsen, 

“Every social media asset wants to do NFT stuff. We want to be a provider for them. Every large bank that is thinking about adopting crypto into their product set, we want to support them.”

While QuickNode provides support across BSC, Ethereum, Matic, Bitcoin and 7 other blockchains, it provides an enhanced level of latency for Solana and the company set out to prove exactly that.

What is Latency?

While a transaction on Bitcoin can take 10 minutes, and those on Ethereum can take 30 seconds, compare this to Solana, built for speed at up to 65,000 transactions per second. The importance of this cannot be understated, as we have learned just how important speed is to the end user, with the ability to dramatically increase conversion rates. Currently, we are seeing the busiest apps enjoying tens of millions of users per month, yet the market is still immature and we can reasonably expect a time when these apps will host hundreds of millions of users each month. For the end user, latency is about choosing the right blockchain that is fast but also choosing apps with connectivity to the chains they want to use.

QuickNode Latency Test

QuickNode conducted a test to discover how fast its service is for developers, compared to other Solana blockchain infrastructure providers, it measured both load time and block-height recency, demonstrating how up-to-date is the information available on the newest blocks.

While Ethereum only has an average block added once every 13 seconds, Solana adds blocks every 4/10ths of a second, making speed of update a really important metric of accuracy, both for traders and businesses relaying information and data.

The results of the test

QuickNode network’s response time in the test was around 8.25 times faster when compared to other Solana based nodes. This in turn correlates to higher conversion rates for the platforms using QuickNode as past statistics have shown. In terms of block height, QuickNode proved to be remarkably faster too, translating to one new block added every 4 tenths of a second when compared to competitors.

Bottom line

According to the authors of the study, “By now quantifying latency, looking through the lens of both Load Time and Block Height Recency, we are attempting to bring some transparency and data-based observations to contribute to conversations around this important topic so decision-makers can make informed decisions.” 

“And by sharing our methodology, we hope we can kick start more conversations across the industry on this topic. We are in the early days, but we believe infrastructure decisions can be critical differentiators in bringing the next generation of Web3 applications to fruition.”

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.