Blockchain Scalability Calculator

IxiCash (IXI)

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Bitcoin (BTC)

1MY9ch1fEHCp1DuQBgKp6r5nh7rL8ocfni

Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

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Bitcoin SV (BSV)

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Litecoin (LTC)

LbHaA6xNNBzpwenxv2E7QJRwPHW71xtHLk

Shift (SHIFT)

14837242180367307374S

Ethereum (ETH)

0x8B91cb79A11010eDaB4681410efDbf2fFf1d5E90

Blockchain Scalability Calculator was created by the Ixian team to help calculate resources required to run a blockchain network with a certain number of users and transactions. The calculator should work for any blockchain network, regardless of the actual technology in use.

We hope that this tool will help blockchain developers, investors, miners, node operators and users get a better understanding of the scaling challenges that the blockchain industry is tackling, and the requirements for operating a full blockchain node.

Number of users

Number of users that the blockchain network will have to support.

Average daily tx per user

Number of daily transactions that every user makes on average.

Average transaction size (bytes)

Average transaction size specified in bytes. For Bitcoin the average in May 2019 was about 250 bytes.

You can usually find or calculate this for other cryptocurrencies from their respective block explorers and other tools.

Block Time (seconds)

Block time that the blockchain is using (i.e. 600 for Bitcoin, 17 for Ethereum, 30 for Ixian, etc...), specified in seconds.

Incoming connections per node

Number of clients that can connect to each node.

Average tx processing time (ms)

How long a single average transaction takes to process on a common CPU (single thread), specified in milliseconds.

Different signature and encryption algorithms require different processing time.

Processing time can be different between older and newer CPUs.

Required transaction processing speed		Required transaction processing speed represents how many transactions per second must the blockchain be able to handle in order to support the required throughput.
Transaction data created per second		Amount of data that is created every second by user transactions.
Bandwidth per node (DL/UL)		How fast must the internet connection be for every node. We assume heavily inter-connected nodes.
Average Block Size		Block size that will be capable of supporting the required number of user transactions.
TX Storage requirements per day		How much data storage is required to store all transactions that users sent in a day.
TX Storage requirements per year		How much data storage is required to store all transactions that users sent in a year.
Account/UTXO State Size		How much data storage is required to store balances of all addresses. We assume that every user has 3 addresses on average.
Required Nodes by Network		How many network nodes must be running to support all of the clients. We assume that each client is connected to at least 3 nodes.
CPU threads required to handle transactions		How many CPU threads per master node are required to process all transactions.