For every immutable transaction moved across any public chain like Bitcoin or Litecoin, there is a node somewhere storing crucial, identifying data. As crypto finds adoption and stablecoins explode in popularity, nodes are stretched, demanding more computing resources.
This trend is expected to continue. It won’t stop today or tomorrow. As such, developers have to get back to work and enhance the backend. Meanwhile, node operators have to buy even more expensive gear to ensure all data is available every day of the week.
According to Blockchain.com, the total size of the Bitcoin blockchain is over 690GB, which has been growing steadily over the years. The respective sizes of smart contract platforms like Ethereum and Solana are expected to grow even faster because each transaction is larger than an ordinary transaction in non-smart contract platforms like Litecoin or Monero.
(Source: Blockchain)
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More Transactions, More Challenges
It is easy to see why.
Whenever data is written, it becomes immutable and stays there forever. On Solana, every compressed transaction ranges from 100 to 400 bytes. And whenever they are added, there must be a state change, such as changes in token balances or program data.
Because of this, every block in Solana adds about 50 to 100MB of data per epoch, even if it is empty due to vote transactions.
At an average throughput of 3,100 TPS, Solana processes around 300M transactions daily, meaning it grows at around 2TB daily.
With more users finding themselves on Solana, trading some of the top meme coins, more data had to be stored.
Until recently, it was tough to search historical data since there was no built-in data indexing for Solana validators. They only had to store a recent state generated at most one week ago. What’s more? The reliance on Google BigTable translated to more costs since the system was not only slow but also had no filtering.
Moreover, because fragmented queries required thousands of RPC calls to get a wallet’s history and there was no time-based search, it was simply impossible to inquire about simple queries like the total number of swaps done in, say, September 2025.
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Helius Has A Grand Solution: Is Solana Now Smooth?
Helius, an infrastructure provider specializing in RPC nodes, API calls, and data streaming, announced a major overhaul that makes searching historical data on Solana easier.
To solve this major pain point, Helius is releasing a new proprietary RPC method called “getTransactionsForAddress.” This RPC method will run on a freshly designed distributed archival storage backend that replaces the reliance on Google BigTable for historical queries. Node operators using Helius infrastructure can now search queries based on time and execute bidirectional sorting.
Here is a visual showcase of just how powerful the new getTransactionsForAddress method is. Instantly jump to see the history of any account, program, or token at any point in time. https://t.co/gujZkMk1ub pic.twitter.com/O1vqia66o4
— owen.sol (@owen_venter) October 28, 2025
Helius said with this RPC, retrieving historical data is now 1000X faster with 10x lower latency across related methods, including getBlock or GetTransaction, for example. What’s more? Reducing the need for 1000s RPC calls improves efficiency and reduces code complexity.
In a post on X, Mert Mumtaz, the CEO of Helius, said this enhancement will forever change Solana as it solves one of the “biggest data/RPC problems that exists.”
today, Solana changes forever
we've solved the biggest data/RPC problem that exists
solana historical/archival data — has now been redesigned
quick context:
today when you query historical data (getBlock/getTransaction/getSignaturesForAddress), it hits Google BigTable
this…
— mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) October 28, 2025
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Will This Helius RPC Update Change Solana Forever?
- Blockchain transactions are immutable
- Solana relies on Google BigTable
- Helius introduces a new RPC method to ease transaction searching
- Will this update change Solana forever?
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