Solana Leads in Payout Speed, TRON in Value, New NOWPayments Data Shows

Crypto payments firm NOWPayments has released new data analyzing six months of enterprise payout activity, revealing that different blockchain networks excel at specific tasks. The report highlights Solana for its transaction speed, TRON for handling the highest monetary volume, and BNB Smart Chain for processing the largest number of individual transactions.

Key Performance Benchmarks

The report provides a comparative framework for businesses choosing a blockchain for mass payouts, based on performance across five major networks. The data, sourced from the NOWPayments platform, shows a clear division of strengths among the leading chains.

• Fastest Speed: Solana (SOL) led with an average payout time of 1 minute and 45 seconds.
• Highest Volume: TRON (TRX) processed the largest share of monetary value, accounting for 43.69% of the total.
• Most Transactions: BNB Smart Chain (BNB) handled the highest frequency of payouts, with 48.23% of all individual transactions.

Together, these three networks, along with Bitcoin and Ethereum, accounted for 94.04% of the total payout volume and 77.84% of transactions in the study.

Implications for Enterprise Use Cases

The findings suggest that the optimal network choice depends heavily on the specific payout model a business employs. TRON's dominance in monetary volume, despite a lower transaction count (15.73%), points to its use for larger, less frequent payments. According to the report, the average TRON payout was approximately 6.2 times larger than on BNB Chain.

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Conversely, BNB Smart Chain's leadership in transaction count indicates its suitability for high-frequency, lower-value payment flows, such as those for affiliate programs or gig economy workers. Solana's superior speed makes it a prime candidate for time-sensitive settlements where finality is critical.

“The useful question is not which network tops a leaderboard. It is what a specific payout flow needs to optimize: value, frequency, speed, or cost,” said Kate Lifshits, Commercial Director at NOWPayments, in a statement accompanying the data.

Other Network Data

For context, the report also included data on Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ethereum ranked third by volume at 18.84% but had the longest average payout time at 5 minutes and 56 seconds.

Bitcoin (BTC) was the second-fastest network with an average payout time of 2 minutes and 53 seconds, while accounting for 6.68% of the volume and 2.60% of the transactions.