Network participants process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Polkadot is a security & interoperability platform for blockchains and applications. Polkadot was founded by Gavin Wood and launched in 2020.

DOT holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue). Polkadot’s investors include Polychain, IOSG Ventures, Hashkey, etc.

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Blockchains (L1)

Polkadot

# Polkadot Transactions per second Methodology

## 1. Overview

Polkadot transactions per second (TPS) measures the average number of transactions processed across the entire Polkadot ecosystem per second. This metric provides insight into the network's throughput capacity and usage patterns by aggregating transaction activity from both the Polkadot relay chain and all tracked parachains. The calculation takes daily transaction counts across all chains and divides by the number of seconds in a day (86,400) to produce an average TPS value.

## 2. Data sources

The metric uses the following raw blockchain data sources:
- **Polkadot relay chain extrinsics**: Core network transactions including staking, governance, and cross-chain coordination activities
- **Polkadot Asset Hub extrinsics**: Transactions on the asset management parachain for token transfers and asset operations
- **Polkadot Collectives extrinsics**: Governance and collective decision-making transactions from the collectives parachain
- **Polkadot Bridge Hub extrinsics**: Cross-chain bridge operations and related transactions
- **Polkadot People chain extrinsics**: Identity and people-related transactions from the people parachain
- **Polkadot Coretime extrinsics**: Coretime allocation and management transactions from the coretime parachain

All data sources provide extrinsic records with block timestamps, transaction hashes, and transaction indices that uniquely identify each on-chain operation.

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Individual chain transaction extraction
- **Purpose**: Standardize and extract transaction data from each Polkadot chain's raw extrinsics
- **Logic**: For each chain (relay chain, Asset Hub, Collectives, Bridge Hub, People, and Coretime), the system extracts extrinsic records and standardizes the data format. Block timestamps are cast to timestamp format, extrinsic hashes become transaction hashes, and extrinsic IDs become transaction indices. Each record is tagged with its corresponding chain identifier to track the source.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (when the transaction was included), `transaction_hash` (unique transaction identifier), `transaction_index` (position identifier), and `chain_id` (source chain identifier)

### Component B: Daily transaction count aggregation
- **Purpose**: Aggregate transaction counts across all Polkadot chains on a daily basis
- **Logic**: Transaction data from all six chains is combined using union operations. For each chain, transactions are grouped by day using timestamp truncation, and distinct transaction indices are counted to avoid duplicates. Each daily count is tagged with metadata including the chain ID, market sector, business segment, and product identifiers. The system handles incremental updates by filtering to recent dates when processing updates.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (truncated to day), `timestamp_grain` (set to 'day'), `chain_id` (specific chain identifier), `product_id` (chain-specific product identifier), and `transaction_count` (distinct count of transactions)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Daily transaction counts from all chains are summed together to get total ecosystem activity per day. The aggregation intentionally combines relay chain and parachain activity to represent the complete Polkadot network throughput.
- **Time aggregation**: All calculations use daily boundaries with timestamps truncated to midnight UTC. The system ensures no gaps in the time series by filling missing days with zero values.
- **Final calculation**: The transactions per second value is calculated by dividing the total daily transaction count by 86,400 (the number of seconds in a day). Safe division is used to handle cases where transaction count might be zero, preventing division errors.

The final TPS metric represents the average throughput of the entire Polkadot ecosystem, providing a comprehensive view of network activity across both the relay chain and all tracked parachains. The metric uses 'unknown' values for aggregated product and chain identifiers since it represents ecosystem-wide activity rather than individual chain performance.

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Average confirmed user transactions added per second.

PolkadotDOT

Transactions per second

Transactions per second

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown