Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
Decentralization was blockchain’s founding promise — but in finance, milliseconds move markets. Unless Web3 can match Wall Street’s sub-second speed, users will keep choosing the faster rails of traditional finance. We see this in decentralized networks like Ethereum, which processes around 15 transactions per second, compared to Visa’s 24,000.
Ever since the internet irrevocably changed finance, the world has never looked back. In fact, speed is an essential component underpinning every facet of how finance operates. It’s the difference between closing an arbitrage opportunity or missing out on it altogether, or seeing life-changing funds hit your account right before you miss an important payment.
At the same time, traditional finance is still incredibly opaque, saddled with hidden fees, and designed to keep an elite few at the top while everyone else is locked out entirely. In order for blockchain to truly revolutionize the systems in place today — and to offer users alternatives that are transparent, open, and equitable — the Web3 ecosystem will have to get a whole lot faster.
Bitcoin is the most well-known cryptocurrency in existence. This is largely because it was the first one, inspiring the idea of an internet-native system of exchange not tied to any one government or nation. However, despite its international renown, builders still can’t ignore that Bitcoin has a 10-minute block time and can handle only 10 transactions per second.
Ethereum marginally improves upon this, but its average of 14 transactions per second is still incredibly slow compared to centralized payment processors. Ethereum transactions can also carry high gas fees, which are a major barrier to widespread adoption. When compared to the NASDAQ, which processes 20,000 stock-market transactions per second on average, it’s clear how egregiously blockchain-based systems fall behind.
Additionally, while blockchain’s principles of decentralization and trust are important, outside crypto-native circles most people do not care as much about decentralization as they do about performance. Many users prefer centralized systems, like traditional banks or exchanges, because they are faster, cheaper, and much more efficient.
Despite Ethereum’s decentralized trust, its slow speed and high costs are a serious drawback. Simply put, the most widely used chains are not even close to competing with traditional offerings. This means users will have to look to faster, more centralized offerings to help close the gap.
Right now, even the most crypto-native circles are starting to sacrifice decentralization for speed. For example, performance-focused chains like Solana, with 400-millisecond block times, support up to 3,000 transactions per second — bringing us closer to traditional offerings. The rise of centralized platforms such as Hyperliquid further bolsters this trend.
In May 2025 alone, Hyperliquid’s trading volume surged by 50%, according to DeFiLlama, highlighting the increasing number of traders who are prioritizing speed over a decentralized ethos.
But even with its incredible momentum, Hyperliquid is still not the endgame. It relies too heavily on infrastructure that isn’t open or composable, and it serves only a small portion of DeFi traders’ needs. The platform lacks the extensibility and interoperability needed to support the transition of modern finance into digital assets on a global scale.
To strike a balance between performance and decentralization, projects can adopt best practices such as batching transactions to reduce on-chain load, using off-chain order books for faster execution, and optimizing state differences to minimize gas costs and latency.
The real killer app for blockchain technology will be a platform that combines decentralization with performance and that’s as fast, smooth, and cheap as centralized alternatives like Revolut. Once that happens, there won’t be any more conversations about “DeFi vs. TradFi” or “centralization vs. decentralization.”
Instead, we’ll simply have a new standard for the financial industry that operates as fast and as seamlessly as the internet itself.
History is unequivocal: the fastest networks become the default. For blockchain, trust alone isn’t a moat — latency is. The builders who deliver Web2-grade speed without sacrificing openness will own the next decade of finance.
