Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency
Sui leads vaa finalization at 3.69 s (p50, 24h) on Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency. Wall-clock seconds from a source-chain transaction being observed by the Guardian network to a Wormhole VAA reaching signing quorum, measured across 20 source chains via the public wormholescan indexer.
TL;DR. As of , Sui leads vaa finalization at 3.69 s (p50, 24h) on Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency. Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/wormhole-vaa-latency.
Wormhole is a cross-chain messaging network. When a transaction on a source chain emits a Wormhole message, a network of Guardian nodes observes it, waits for the source chain's own finality threshold, and each Guardian signs an attestation (VAA , Verified Action Approval). Once 13 of 19 Guardians have signed, the VAA is quorum-ready and can be relayed to any destination chain to unlock the corresponding action (bridged token mint, cross-chain message delivery, etc.). This benchmark measures end-to-end VAA finalization latency by source chain: how long it takes from a source-chain transaction being seen to a full-quorum VAA becoming available on wormholescan. Every value on this page is an observation of real user traffic (~thousands of VAAs/day) , the harness never sends canary transactions and never estimates. Latency distribution is dominated by the source chain's own finality latency: BNB Chain and Sui with sub-second finality land VAAs in ~5-10 s; Solana's 32-slot finalized commitment adds ~15-25 s; Ethereum's Casper FFG two-epoch wait can push VAAs into the 15-30 s range depending on where in the epoch a message lands. Choosing a source chain for a Wormhole integration is a choice about VAA availability latency, and this page ranks the 20 source chains Wormhole supports that have both non-trivial VAA volume and a live listing on OpenChainBench.
Methodology
For each of 20 source chains supported by Wormhole, we measure the wall-clock latency between a source-chain block being observed and a Wormhole VAA emitted by that block reaching Guardian signing quorum. Data source: the public wormholescan `/api/v1/vaas` feed, polled every 60 seconds. Each VAA's `updatedAt − timestamp` is one observation of finalization latency for that source chain, recorded in a per-chain histogram. The p50/p90/p99 shown here are computed via Prometheus `histogram_quantile` over the last 24 hours. See cross-chain-messaging-latency for the side-by-side comparison across all four end-to-end protocols on the same shared observation stack.
Frequently asked
What is a Wormhole VAA?
A VAA (Verified Action Approval) is a signed attestation produced by the Wormhole Guardian network that a specific event happened on a source chain (a token bridge deposit, a cross-chain message emission, etc.). Once 13 of 19 Guardians have signed, the VAA is quorum-ready and can be relayed to any destination chain Wormhole supports.
What does this benchmark actually measure?
Wall-clock seconds from a source-chain block being observed by the Guardian network to a fully-signed VAA reaching wormholescan's indexer. That is the closest publicly-observable proxy for 'how fast can I use Wormhole to move something out of this chain'. It does NOT measure destination-chain delivery time (which is caller-driven , anyone can relay a signed VAA).
How is the data sourced?
The harness polls wormholescan's public `/api/v1/vaas` endpoint every 60 seconds and records `updatedAt − timestamp` for each VAA it has not seen before. Wormholescan is Wormhole Foundation's canonical indexer; the timestamps come directly from the Guardian gossip layer and the on-chain event observation. No canary transactions are sent, no user funds are used.
Why does source chain matter so much?
Because Guardians wait for the source chain's own finality threshold before signing. On sub-second BFT chains (Sui, BNB), the wait is minimal. On Solana, Guardians wait for 32-slot finalized commitment (~13 s). On Ethereum, they wait for Casper FFG finalization, which can add another 12-15 s. The source-chain finality latency is the floor for Wormhole VAA availability.
Which source chain is fastest for Wormhole today?
Sui currently leads at 3.69 s (VAA finalization p50 over the last 24 hours). The leaderboard re-sorts continuously against fresh Prometheus samples; the ranking on this page is the ranking right now.
Why not measure the destination side too?
Destination-side latency (relay a signed VAA + burn/mint on the target chain) is caller-driven. Anyone can relay a VAA once it is quorum-ready; the time to do so depends on the relayer's gas policy, the destination chain's own block time, and how urgently the caller needs delivery. Measuring it would benchmark the caller's choices, not Wormhole. VAA availability, by contrast, is entirely a property of the Wormhole protocol and its source-chain observation strategy , that is what this bench isolates.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/wormhole-vaa-latency