{"slug":"ws-head-latency-base","title":"Fastest Base WebSocket newHeads push, live block-push lag across RPC providers","subtitle":"Per-block WebSocket push lag in milliseconds versus the earliest provider to deliver the same Base head, measured continuously from one eu-west vantage point.","category":"RPCs","metric":"Block push lag","unit":"ms","status":"live","higherIsBetter":false,"filters":null,"value":3.61207,"leader":{"name":"PublicNode","slug":"publicnode","value":3.61207},"rankings":[{"name":"PublicNode","slug":"publicnode","ms":{"p50":3.61207,"p90":124.576,"p99":157.844,"mean":9.53484},"successRate":100,"sampleSize":163449,"sampleHealth":23.349857142857143,"dataConfidence":"healthy"},{"name":"dRPC","slug":"drpc","ms":{"p50":12.0295,"p90":141.219,"p99":10240,"mean":29.2301},"successRate":95.1027,"sampleSize":163449,"sampleHealth":23.349857142857143,"dataConfidence":"healthy"}],"sparkline":[3.98173,4.21697,3.86855,3.55359,3.27735,3.34449,3.51251,4.11576,4.29105,4.72414,4.17854,3.67078,1.68224,0.49562,0.480779,0.460173,0.46709,0.441748,0.418954,0.443678,0.472621,0.476089,0.414186,0.419395,2.28378,3.57049,3.36777,0.440199,0.39838,0.428216,0.435757,0.451067,0.442114,0.463798,0.432606,0.434144,0.448223,0.461146,0.471918,0.474621,0.483771,0.487574,2.94318,3.37134,3.7895,3.91662,3.97072,3.88133,3.64369,3.52746,3.38604,3.6136,3.64012,4.18416,4.75387,15.2629,17.1814,19.8142,43.3866,46.5821,42.1308,18.6462,16.1237,15.3941,13.8261,12.633,4.84222,4.6252,4.48178,4.38432,4.35745,4.28587,4.29144],"sampleSize":326898,"expectedN":7000,"dataConfidence":"healthy","asOf":"2026-09-12T03:25:33.426Z","headline":"PublicNode posts the lowest block push lag at 4 ms (p50, 24h) on Fastest Base WebSocket newHeads push, live block-push lag across RPC providers.","quote":"PublicNode posts the lowest block push lag at 4 ms (p50, 24h) on Fastest Base WebSocket newHeads push, live block-push lag across RPC providers. Source: OpenChainBench (https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/ws-head-latency-base).","cite":{"plain":"OpenChainBench. \"Fastest Base WebSocket newHeads push, live block-push lag across RPC providers\". Retrieved 2026-09-12. https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/ws-head-latency-base","bibtex":"@misc{ocb_ws_head_latency_base,\n  author = {OpenChainBench},\n  title  = {Fastest Base WebSocket newHeads push, live block-push lag across RPC providers},\n  year   = {2026},\n  url    = {https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/ws-head-latency-base},\n  note   = {Retrieved 2026-09-12}\n}","apa":"OpenChainBench. (2026). Fastest Base WebSocket newHeads push, live block-push lag across RPC providers. Retrieved September 12, 2026, from https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/ws-head-latency-base","ris":"TY  - GEN\r\nAU  - OpenChainBench\r\nTI  - Fastest Base WebSocket newHeads push, live block-push lag across RPC providers\r\nPY  - 2026\r\nUR  - https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/ws-head-latency-base\r\nY2  - 2026-09-12\r\nER  - \r\n"},"pageUrl":"https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/ws-head-latency-base","ogImage":"https://openchainbench.com/api/og/ws-head-latency-base","source":"https://github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/ws-head-latency","methodology":["Providers measured (keyless WebSocket endpoints): PublicNode (wss://base-rpc.publicnode.com), dRPC (wss://base.drpc.org). Tenderly does not expose a keyless Base WebSocket path and is scoped out until a public gateway is announced. Keyed providers (Alchemy, Infura, Chainstack, QuickNode) join the cohort when contributor keys are wired via WS_URL_<PROVIDER>_BASE env vars.","Cohort saturation: Blast, LlamaRPC, BlockPI, 1RPC, mainnet.base.org and Ankr all reject a keyless WebSocket handshake at the time of ship (verified 2026-07), which is why the keyless tier stops at two.","Chain scope: every query on this page is pinned to chain=\"base\". Base block cadence is 2 seconds, so a 24h window carries roughly 43000 samples per provider (versus ~7200 on Ethereum), well above the 7000 sample floor used by the parent bench.","Race scoring: identical to the parent [ws-head-latency](https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/ws-head-latency-ethereum) benchmark. First provider to deliver block N sets T0. Each provider's sample for block N is arrival(N) minus T0 in milliseconds. Cohort closes 5 seconds after the first arrival; late arrivals are scored as missed blocks via ws_block_gap_total rather than as huge latency samples.","Relative, not absolute: subtraction of two arrivals over the same path removes vantage-point network latency. Consequence: the fastest provider reads near zero by construction. The honest readings are win rate, trailers' lag distribution, and gap counts.","Aggregation: per-provider lag histogram with a sub-millisecond floor (0.5 ms bucket up through 10 s tail), p50/p90/p99 via histogram_quantile over the 24h rate. Coverage score = ws_head_blocks_seen_total divided by cohort maximum, clamped to 1. A provider that pushes fast but skips blocks loses on this column, not on the latency percentiles.","Connection discipline: one persistent WebSocket per (provider, chain), client ping every 30s, read deadline 60s, 90s head watchdog forcing reconnect when a socket keeps the heartbeat alive but silently drops the subscription. Exponential backoff 2s to 60s on reconnect.","Vantage point: a single eu-west host. Multi-region deployment is a follow-up on the parent bench roadmap; the same limitation and the reasoning behind it are documented there."],"license":"CC-BY-4.0"}