Bitails stress tests BSV with 3B UTXOs—how robust is it?

• Bitails stress tests BSV with 3B UTXOs—how robust is it？

Noticed some large transaction spikes lately？ Block explorer and indexing service Bitails has been stress-testing the BSV network. The tests, which began just over a week ago, are designed partly to validate upgrades to Bitails infrastructure and codebase, as well as the BSV network itself.

We will start the Bitails stress test today— not for hype, but to validate the infrastructure and codebase weve rebuilt around the vision of scalable blockchain for billions of people.

The first phase focuses on expanding the UTXO set. Were keeping it smooth to avoid…

Bitails have been part of the BSV ecosystem for about three years now, and at that time, tests involving millions of transactions were regularly conducted in a short time. Co-founder Meysam Rezaei said it prepares the companys system for high-load scenarios, benefits miners by simulating conditions they may encounter, and ensures their systems are robust.

The test aims to optimize the UTXO set and update performance during intense activity, Rezaei added. Bitails has added approximately 3 billion UTXOs (so far) to generate load at the networks peak capacity.

“We got to 7,000 TPS two days ago and could go higher, but that was not the plan at the time,” he said. “TPS,” or transactions per second, refers to the number of transactions being broadcast to the network and those transactions being mined. In one sense, that number might seem underwhelming, but in others, Bitails found the network performed better than expected.

When you increase the load on the network this way, everything might seem fine at first. However, transactions may eventually get stuck in the mempool and not mined—Rezaei said this was a problem Bitails encountered during previous stress tests. The company hopes to execute at least 10K sustained TPS to check both parts and if the BSV nodes can handle the load, they could try to push that to 20K, although they dont expect the real number to pass 10,000. The tests did see 10K at one point but could not make it sustainable, even by increasing fees.

“BSV targets massive scalability, currently claiming 5,000 TPS (previously it was 50,000 TPS according to the sources at that time) with potential for millions in the future,” Rezaei said. “As an indexer, weve overhauled our codebase and infrastructure to efficiently handle this scale without relying on costly, oversized systems.”

Bitails is “all about efficiency,” he said. This keeps costs low and makes BSV practical for businesses and ordinary users.

“As an independent team, not tied to big investors or corporate players, we focus on what‘s best for the BSV blockchain’s long-term success. Our recent stress test is about finding and fixing weak spots to make BSV reliable for real-world use, so businesses can count on it,” he remarked.

Is everyone happy with stress tests？ Well… yes and no

Stress tests will always unleash some controversy. BSV is an open, general-purpose blockchain with many moving parts and projects operating on the network. As such, Bitails received some criticism—both mild and more overt—over concerns its test transactions might clog the network for other users.

It is not about endpoints failing, it is about the UTXO set being updated under pressure. And I dont think this test is making BSV unusable, if a 3k TPS is making BSV unusable, it is much better to know it know so we can stop promoting it as a scalable system.

As the company pointed out, scalability and massive transaction throughput are BSVs key selling points. At the very least, it should be able to perform under pressure. Pressure like that will only increase in the future, even under the best-case scenarios, as more and more applications begin to use the network.

“Without such preparation, a malicious actor could disrupt the network or our systems at low cost. While testing on our main infrastructure may cause temporary user inconvenience, its critical for long-term scalability and a resilient blockchain ecosystem. Ultimately, we aim to identify and resolve bottlenecks in the BSV ecosystem, including our systems and BSV nodes, to ensure readiness for real-world usage.”

The other question Bitails‘ test raises is: Why now？ Isn’t Teranode about to arrive for everyone, with the potential to handle thousands, or even millions, of transactions per second？

According to Rezaei, backed up by some of Bitails comments on X, they simply got tired of waiting for Teranode to become available to the masses and decided to start testing with the current (SV Node) setup, pushing it as far as it would go.

“Our goal is clear: find any weak spots in our infrastructure that could cause issues and fix them before they become problems. So far, the results are looking very good for Bitails, we found some minor bugs and fixed them. And also [the] BSV network is handling larger UTXO sets better than we expected. Thats a strong sign BSV has real potential, even without Teranode,” Rezaei said.

(We note that although the open-source code for Teranode hasnt yet been released, it has been available to some for a while now. BSV services such as GorillaPool are already using it.)

Everyone who could conceivably run Teranode from todays perspective has been running it for months.

The open source release is something to be excited about, but it‘s silly to act like the software doesn’t exist or that anyone is maliciously holding it back.