Reef testnet stress test

We have ran multiple stress tests on Reef testnet to benchmark Reef chain’s performance.

Methodology

Reef testnet is currently running the same runtime and configuration as Reef mainnet, therefore these results are also indicative of mainnet performance. The transactions were broadcasted through a regular Reef node, without any optimizations.

We have prepared and broadcasted two types of transactions to test for both on-chain and EVM throughput.

For the EVM throughput, ERC-20 token transfers were chosen, as they are the most common transaction type on Ethereum.

The source code to replicate the test is available on Github.

Results

The EVM token transfer test yielded 550 TPS (transactions per second), while a slighly more complex on-chain transfers yielded 465 TPS.

The current throughput seems to be around 20x higher than Ethereum, thanks to the more efficient NPoS consensus and modern blockchain architecture.

Future improvements

Reef chain can scale its throughput further by increasing block weight limit as well as by increasing the compute time allowance. Currently, the allowance is 2s out of 10s block time to ensure everyone can run a full node from anywhere in the world, using only modest hardware ($20/mo VPS should be sufficient).