Layer 1 Performance Wars Intensify as Solana, Monad, Sui Vie for Developer Supremacy

The Layer 1 (L1) blockchain performance wars have reignited in 2026 as application developers re-evaluate their base-layer choices. Solana leads in real-world throughput and DeFi liquidity, with over $8 billion in total value locked and a proven 65,000 TPS burst capacity under live conditions.

Monad promises to deliver 10,000 sustained TPS with its EVM-compatible parallel execution architecture, targeting Ethereum developers directly without requiring them to learn a new programming language. However, the Monad team faces significant risks in executing their ambitious plan, as every pre-mainnet L1 has encountered unexpected latency and security vulnerabilities after launch.

Sui takes a fundamentally different approach from both Solana and Monad, using an object-centric data model derived from the Move programming language to enable parallel processing of transactions without conflict detection overhead. Sui's network processed a peak of 297 million transactions in a single day during a gaming event in November 2025.