Scalability is critical for blockchain adoption. Polkadot claims up to 1 million transactions per second (TPS) through its parachain model, where parallel chains process transactions simultaneously, secured by the Relay Chain’s Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) and GRANDPA finality. However, this TPS is theoretical and unproven in real-world conditions. Cosmos uses Tendermint BFT consensus, enabling fast, low-fee transactions across zones, with practical TPS in the thousands (e.g., KAVA). Its hub-and-zone model scales by adding independent chains, offering near-infinite scalability but requiring each zone to secure itself.