A discussion regarding the throughput of major blockchains emerged after an X user, 'Minus Wells,' claimed that 1,500 TPS is not the future of finance, not even 5,000, adding that this is roughly Visa's average throughput on a normal day.
"1,500 TPS is not the future of finance, not even 5,000. Sorry, they lied to you for engagement. That's roughly Visa's average throughput on a normal day. Congrats on matching the legacy system," Wells wrote.
While Visa's network (VisaNet) has a technical capacity of 65,000 to over 83,000 transactions per second (TPS), its actual average volume runs at approximately 8,100 to 8,500 TPS. The post attracted attention in the XRP community given that the XRP Ledger sustains a throughput of 1,500 transactions per second (1,500 TPS) on commodity hardware.
Wells clarified he was not personally attacking XRP, claiming that XRPL, Avalanche, Stellar, Tezos L1, Cardano's Leios experiments, and OP Mainnet swap tests have all published throughput figures or results below 5,000 TPS. "Those aren't equivalent tests or necessarily current hard ceilings. But the question applies to everyone: can the infrastructure handle the demand future finance could bring?" he asked.
Massive scaling potential ahead?
Hussein Zangana (Vet), XRP Ledger Foundation director of community, responded to claims regarding L1 blockchains' scalability with respect to XRP, saying "it's a process."
Vet made a case for the comparatively lower TPS of decentralized blockchains, noting that not every transaction needs to be settled in seconds. He pointed out that payment channels or higher layers like Dassie (Interledger) are much better suited for mass (micro) payments.
With respect to XRP, Vet noted that Mastercard is looking to do more hackathons with the XRP Ledger after a successful one at the Swell event while leveraging AI.
Batch, which allows multiple transactions to be bundled into a batch that is processed all together and was launched on the XRPL mainnet in October 2026, stands to benefit the XRP Ledger in this regard. "Batched settlement of institutions is good enough in the meantime to be very beneficial vs. TradFi," Vet added.
The XRP Ledger Foundation director of community highlighted massive scaling potential for the XRP Ledger and L1 blockchains.
"I strongly believe we'll scale the L1s very sharply, not only XRPL, thanks to AI helping us to advance this tech even further. We are continuously pushing throughput higher and there is a lot of potential (!!!) for significantly more," Vet wrote.
