As of July 11, 2026, the Avalanche C-Chain is processing about 29.3 transactions per second, measured over the most recent blocks via the public RPC. Important context: that is current demand, not capacity — the network's ceiling is far higher.
Measured TPS vs. theoretical TPS
TPS claims cause endless confusion because two different things get the same label:
- Observed TPS — how many transactions the network is actually processing right now. This tracks user demand: quiet days sit in single digits, busy mints and airdrops push it into the hundreds.
- Theoretical TPS — what the network could sustain if demand were unlimited. Avalanche consensus benchmarks at ~4,500 TPS per chain; practical EVM execution on the C-Chain sustains several hundred.
A low observed TPS does not mean a slow network — it means block space is plentiful, which is exactly why fees stay low.
Horizontal scaling with Avalanche L1s
Avalanche's real answer to throughput is not one faster chain but many parallel chains. Any project can launch its own Avalanche L1 (formerly called a subnet) with dedicated validators and dedicated block space. Because L1s do not share blocks, total network throughput grows with every L1 that launches — gaming chains, institutional chains, and DeFi chains all run at full speed simultaneously.
Why sub-second finality changes what TPS means
Raw TPS is only half the story: a chain that processes 10,000 TPS but takes minutes to finalize still makes users wait. Avalanche finalizes every transaction in under a second, so throughput and settlement speed arrive together.
Throughput and on-chain reputation
High-throughput, low-fee networks generate rich behavioral data: real users transact often because it costs almost nothing to do so. SOCI4L reads that activity — transaction cadence, protocol diversity, longevity — from the Avalanche C-Chain to build wallet reputation profiles that are hard to fake and easy to verify.