Stress Testing GetBlock RPC Nodes

The BNB Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain) is a high-performance, low-fee EVM-compatible blockchain with fast finality. In fact, BNB Chain recently hit an all-time high of 2,763 TPS at peak, and ongoing upgrades (like Parallel EVM) have boosted throughput to the thousands of TPS. For developers building on BNB, it may equate to potentially enormous amounts of transactions. To accomplish those loads, my team required a robust RPC provider.

I selected GetBlock, a blockchain-as-a-service provider covering 50+ networks (including BNB Chain) with 99.9% uptime SLA and 24/7 support. GetBlock offers a range of node solutions – shared, dedicated, and even custom clusters for BNB. Overall, BNB Chain's high throughput needs and GetBlock's multi-node configuration and support made this pairing an ideal fit for our test.

Testing Methodology

I quantified the RPC node's rate of transactions with a formal load-testing practice. I initially set my benchmarks: the number of requests (or transactions) per second that we'd have to support, and what the acceptable latency targets should be. I then utilized a load-testing tool (custom script) to introduce real-world JSON-RPC traffic to the GetBlock BNB endpoint. Testing replicated common RPC calls, such as eth_getBlock requests and signed eth_sendRawTransaction broadcasts. I followed industry guide best practices:

1. Estimate load and goals. I estimated a peak load (hundreds of RPS) and set a success metric (e.g. 90th-percentile latency <100ms). This was done after advice to "identify the expected peak load" and desired latency goals.

2. Simulate traffic. I incrementally scaled up concurrent requests in stages. For instance, I started at 50 RPS and increased by 50 RPS every few minutes, watching for errors or latency spikes.

3. Monitor metrics. Throughout the test I measured response time and error rates. I also tracked our client machine's CPU/memory to ensure that it was not the bottleneck. On the GetBlock side, I tracked usage via their dashboard.

4. Stress testing. Once I confirmed normal loads, I ran them through. As per scalability testing, I kept raising the load above projected usage to find break points. This "stress test" showed what happened at peak pressure.

5. Repeat from multiple locations. I tested out of complete geographic diversity for completeness to see if latency varied significantly.

This method enabled me to observe how throughput (RPS) and latency responded when loaded to the max.

Performance Results

My results were stunning. On the Unlimited shared-node plan (300 RPS rated), the GetBlock BNB node easily managed 200–300 RPS with little to no latency. Pushing beyond the shared limit, I configured a three-node cluster and achieved linear scaling. I had hundreds of RPS per node (over 500 RPS in total) in cluster mode without request failure. At maximum load, response times were low (order of tens of milliseconds). For example, 90% of requests were completed at ~100ms latency. These figures represent the BNB Chain’s fast performance profile.

Throughout all the tests, reliability was iron-clad. I experienced no downtime or faults, consistent with GetBlock's 99.9% uptime guarantee. No RPC requests timed out on the node – not even under load, all responses were delivered successfully. In summary, the node delivered the guaranteed throughput (300 RPS on shared; unlimited on dedicated) with reliable low latency under load.

Developer-Friendly Benefits of GetBlock

Here is what I learned from my interaction with GetBlock:

• Flexible pricing & scalability. GetBlock offers tiered plans and node clusters so that you only pay for what you need. On BNB, the free plan is suitable for 5 RPS, the mid-range "Starter" plan is suitable for 25 RPS, and the “Pro” plan is suitable for 200 RPS. If you need more, dedicated nodes have no fixed rate limit (and come with up to 99.99% uptime). Switching to a dedicated 3-node cluster in my case was straightforward. Clusters are built to handle "a high volume of incoming requests per second (RPS)" to avoid overload. With this scalability elasticity, it was simple to handle extremely high loads.

• Support and high reliability. GetBlock advocates for 99.9% uptime and 24/7 support. In practice, my node was always available during testing, with no outages. When I had questions (for example, about upgrading my plan or optimizing requests), GetBlock’s support team was responsive.

• Ease of integration. Connecting to GetBlock’s RPC endpoint was as simple as using any Ethereum-compatible node. BNB Chain’s full EVM compatibility means standard tools such as Web3.js, ethers.js or even curl can communicate without modifications. GetBlock also has support for several APIs (HTTP, WebSocket, gRPC, GraphQL), so I was able to select the protocol that suited my stack. In short, no custom integration effort was required. I simply pointed our clients at the GetBlock URL and started querying.

• Developer tooling and visibility. GetBlock provides easy monitoring and dashboard. I could monitor request volume and errors in real time from their web UI. Node cluster also has native monitoring and alerting to ensure maximum uptime. In development, this visibility let me see usage patterns and detect no anomalies. Usage metrics, analytics dashboard, logs made it easy to manage and debug my workloads.

• Reliability under load. Because GetBlock handles the infrastructure under the hood, I didn't need to spend time on server maintenance. Even with peak loads, failover protection and load balancing (part of cluster setup) kept performance silky. The grunt work of uptime and reliability was handled by GetBlock, and I could focus on the testing.

Challenges and Solutions

I had only minor issues during testing. The largest "hassle" was just running into the free-tier rate limit while performing some initial tests. The free shared plan only handles 5 RPS, which I was soon to reach. In order to proceed, I upgraded to a paid plan (and eventually to a dedicated cluster) from GetBlock's account dashboard. This was hassle-free, and support confirmed the upgrade within minutes.

Aside from that, there were no configuration problems or stability problems. The API endpoints functioned as described, and the node was stable. Overall, any limitation was taken care of by upgrading to the next plan or by adding nodes, and there were no software bugs or downtime to contend with.

Conclusion: GetBlock for BNB Chain

My throughput testing confirmed that GetBlock is among the best choices for BNB Chain devs. The RPC node did not let me down – high requests-per-second throughput, low latency, and bulletproof uptime. GetBlock's flexible scalability (via higher-tier plans and cluster nodes) enables it to grow together with your dApp's needs. The service is developer-oriented, easy integration with Ethereum tools, and useful monitoring dashboards. With responsive support and a 99.9% uptime SLA, GetBlock removes most of the infrastructure headache from running on BNB Chain.

In short, my experience makes me think that GetBlock provides the high-performance, high-uptime RPC infrastructure BNB-based applications require. I strongly recommend it to any development team seeking reliable node access on BNB Chain.