The TPS illusion: Why high-speed blockchains lie about decentralization

And why Monad, Solana and many shiny “future L1s” fail the decentralization test — while small, slow chains like Bitcoin and ADAMANT stay truly sovereign.

The brutal truth: TPS kills decentralization

Every new “future-proof” chain promises 100,000 TPS and sub-second finality, “next-gen consensus”.

It always sounds magical.

It never is.

Because physics, networking, and hardware reality immediately destroy the marketing fairy tale:

You cannot have both extreme throughput and extreme decentralization.

The higher the TPS, the fewer people can run a node.

Once you understand that, the entire L1 landscape looks very different.

To process 10–20k transactions per second, a node must:

• Validate 600k–1.2M tx/minute
• Keep state updates in RAM
• Write massive data volumes to NVMe
• Sync blocks across the network under 100ms
• Execute EVM or custom VM at datacenter speeds

This instantly eliminates:

• home validators
• cheap VPS servers
• hobby nodes
• Raspberry Pis
• anyone without enterprise-grade hardware

Decentralization isn’t a philosophy. It’s simply:

“Can an average person run a full node?”

If the answer is no, the chain is centralized — no matter how good the marketing sounds.

Reality check: BTC vs ETH vs Solana vs Monad vs ADM vs LTC

Let’s check the hardware requirements for running nodes, as well as the costs to mine or validate blocks.

🟢 Bitcoin — the decentralization gold standard

TPS: ~7

Node requirements:

• Any consumer hardware
• HDD/SSD 400–600 GB
• 4–8 GB RAM
• Even a Raspberry Pi works

Mining:

• Cost to run a mining node: $500 one-time hardware
• Some electricity costs

Result:

• Maximum decentralization
• Tens of thousands of nodes
• Anyone can run it
• Profitable miners expensive, but nodes remain cheap

Bitcoin is slow on purpose.

Slow = accessible = decentralized.

🟠 Ethereum — the middle ground

TPS: ~15–30

Node requirements:

• SSD 2 TB
• 16–32 GB RAM
• Multi-core CPU
• Stable bandwidth

Validating blocks:

• Validator requires 32 ETH (~$100k+)
• Plus hardware (~$1500)

Result:

• Moderately decentralized
• Thousands of validators
• But too heavy for casual users
• Economically centralized, technically semi-decentralized

ETH scales via L2 rollups, not via L1 inflation.

This is the correct design.

🔴 Solana — fast, but centralized by default

TPS: Advertised 50k+, real-world 300–1500

Node requirements:

• 256 GB RAM
• High-end 16–32 core CPU
• NVMe 2–4 TB
• 1–10 Gbps bandwidth
• Constant babysitting

Validating blocks:

• Hardware: ~$5,000–$10,000
• Plus access to datacenter tier internet
• Stake required: 50,000–200,000+ SOL delegated

Result:

• Only datacenters can run validators
• Exposure to coordinated downtime
• Economic + technical centralization

Solana sacrifices decentralization for throughput — knowingly.

🔴 Monad — the “Solana-performance EVM” with Solana-level hardware needs

Promised TPS: 10k–20k

Expected hardware:

• 64–256 GB RAM
• 8–32 core CPU
• NVMe SSD 2–4 TB
• High-bandwidth networking

Validating blocks:

• Hardware: $5,000+
• Stake: unknown, but likely high (VC-heavy allocation)

Result:

• Will be fast
• Will not be decentralized
• Validators = datacenter actors only
• Economic + technical centralization

Monad is simply Solana with Solidity — a valid design, but not a decentralized one.

🟢 Litecoin (LTC) — stable, conservative, boring, decentralized-enough

TPS: ~56

Node requirements:

• Light SSD
• 4–8 GB RAM
• Home hardware friendly

Mining:

• Cost to run a mining node: $500 one-time hardware
• Some electricity costs

Result:

• Truly decentralized
• Works everywhere
• Reliable PoW model

LTC is decentralized because it stayed small and conservative.

🟢 ADAMANT (ADM) — small, fast enough, and genuinely decentralized

TPS: tens

Node requirements:

• VPS with 2 vCPU
• 2 GB RAM
• 60–80 GB SSD

Validating blocks:

• $5/month VPS can run a full validator node
• Stake: ~500k ADM ≈ $7k
• Forging pools available with nearly zero-cost entrance

Result:

• Anyone can run a node
• Extremely accessible
• No datacenter lock-in
• High participation decentralization

ADM is what decentralization looks like in practice — not on slides.

Capital allocation and VC dominance: who really owns the chain?

This is the other half of decentralization that nobody discusses.

VC allocation = future sell pressure + control.

High TPS + high VC allocation = two layers of centralization at once.

“False decentralization”: The most dangerous type of blockchain

Many modern chains market themselves as:

• “Web-scale decentralization”
• “High TPS without sacrificing security”
• “Democratized validator sets”
• “Next-gen supernodes”

But in reality:

If only 0.01% of users can run a node, it is not a decentralized system — it is a CDN with a token.

And here’s the painful truth:

It is better to have an honestly centralized system (like Tron) than a chain that pretends to be decentralized but isn’t.

Why?

• Honest centralization = predictable governance
• Hidden centralization = attack surface
• Honest centralization = reliable performance
• Hidden centralization = false security assumptions, catastrophic failures
• A chain that lies about decentralization is more dangerous than one that admits it.

Conclusion: TPS is the new scam metric

Projects will keep promising thousands TPS and “your chain, but faster”. But the conclusion is brutally simple:

The more TPS a chain targets, the fewer humans can run it.

And the fewer humans can run it, the less decentralized — and less secure — it is.

Real decentralization is not glamorous.

It is not fast.

It is not sexy.

It is not VC-friendly.

It is inexpensive, accessible, boring, resilient, censorship-resistant.

And that’s why systems like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and ADAMANT survive cycles.

The TPS illusion: Why high-speed blockchains lie about decentralization was originally published in ADAMANT on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.