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Throughput Latency Tension

Definition

Throughput latency tension describes the inherent trade-off between the number of transactions a network can process per second and the time it takes for a single transaction to be confirmed. In blockchain systems, increasing throughput often means sacrificing latency, and vice-versa, due to the constraints of distributed consensus. Achieving high transaction rates might involve longer block times or less frequent finality, while rapid confirmation often limits the total number of transactions processed concurrently. This tension is a fundamental challenge in designing scalable and efficient decentralized networks. Optimizing this balance is a primary goal for protocol developers.