What are gigagas & GPS?

"gigagas" is a new concept mentioned in the article "Reth’s path to 1 gigagas per second, and beyond" released by the leading crypto venture capital institution Paradigm on April 24, 2024.

As we know, the performance of blockchain networks is typically measured by TPS (Transactions Per Second). Generally, when describing network performance, it is common to say that the network's transaction processing speed can reach xxTPS. For example, Ethereum's current average transaction processing speed is around 12-15 TPS. However, using TPS alone cannot effectively demonstrate the performance of a blockchain network because TPS only shows the number of transactions executed per second, without reflecting the workload required to execute transactions. For example, in the crypto field, different types of transactions often require different computational loads, with the computational load for contracts typically much higher than that for simple spot trading. In other words, networks where most transactions involve contracts have higher scalability and stronger performance than networks where most transactions involve spot trading, even if their TPS is the same.

Therefore, Paradigm believes that for Ethereum and other EVM-compatible blockchains, GPS (Gas Per Second) is a more accurate measure standard.

GPS (Gas Per Second) shows the amount of gas fees the network requires to process transactions per second, reflecting the computational workload needed when executing transactions or interacting with smart contracts on the blockchain network. Therefore, Paradigm believes that using GPS as a performance standard can more clearly reflect the efficiency and performance of blockchain networks, while also helping to assess network costs.

To learn more about gas fees, please refer to our other article: "What is Gas Fee."

"gigagas" is the word Paradigm created to promote the GPS performance standard. "Giga" is a metric prefix representing 10^9, or one billion. For example, in computer science, gigabyte (GB) represents a storage capacity of one billion bytes. So, gigagas is easily understood as equivalent to 1,000,000,000 GPS. One purpose of Paradigm creating this word is to promote the GPS standard, and another purpose is to promote its Ethereum execution layer client Reth, and advertise its performance advantages.

However, introducing the new standard is quite challenging given the widespread use of the TPS standard in the industry. The biggest difference between GPS and TPS is that GPS can reflect partial costs of the network. But for most Layer1 networks other than Ethereum and EVM-compatible blockchains, GPS does not work well in measuring network costs (because many Layer1 networks have their own unique cost models that cannot be reflected solely through gas fees). Nevertheless, GPS has a significant role in analyzing blockchain network performance and efficiency, and it is likely to become a key indicator for measuring blockchain network performance in addition to TPS in the future.