A short write-up on the spam attack on the Nano network that was happening the past few days. First, the statistics.
In the past 24 hours, (07/03/2021 08:30:00 CET to 08/03/2021 08:30:00 CET) 4.6 million transactions were done on the Nano network. This averages out to 53 transactions per second sustained over a period of 24 hours, and is more than double the transactions Bitcoin and Ethereum did on their busiest days ever.
The average confirmation time for these 4,600,000 transactions was roughly 0.38 seconds. In these 380 milliseconds, the transactions were confirmed by 51% or more of the Nano network worldwide. The analysis on how many nodes these confirmations involved is not available yet for the current spam attack. In the past, an average of 58 nodes were involved in getting a transaction confirmed, and it currently takes a minimum of 7 nodes to reach a confirmation. Nano transactions are deterministically confirmed, meaning that once a transaction is confirmed it can never be rolled back. Nano has never had a doublespend, nor a transaction not processing correctly.
In other words - running at a sustained transaction throughput of over double the maximum throughput of the two largest chains combined, one could send a Nano transaction and have it confirmed in the other person's wallet faster than you could say "this is amazing". These 4.6 million transactions took less energy to process than a single Bitcoin transaction would, and while a single Bitcoin transaction would set you back about $13.72, these 4.6 million transaction cost exactly $0 in fees.
While the purpose of the spam attack was most likely to either stress the network or take it down, what it's effectively done is prove that Nano is able to handle serious usage. This wasn't a stresstest on a test-net, or a stresstest done by the developers themselves in which the circumstances were easily controlled as is common in stress tests on other crypto. This was an external attack or test, one which Nano passed with flying colours.
If you are reading this and still wondering whether Nano might be worth your time to check out - both before, throughout and after this attack anyone could and can try Nano for free, which will take just a few minutes. I'd recommend everyone to do so, because as anyone who has personally tried or looked into Nano will tell you, it truly is the future of money and it's here now.
