TPS figures are usually theoretical maximums under ideal conditions with trivial transactions. Real throughput depends on transaction complexity, state growth and how many nodes must keep up.
Treat claimed TPS as marketing until you see sustained on-chain numbers during a busy period. Also ask what was traded away: higher throughput usually means heavier hardware requirements, fewer independent nodes, and more centralised validation.
Example: a chain advertising 65,000 TPS may sustain a few thousand in practice, with a meaningful share being simple votes rather than user activity. Compare that with observed active-addresses and fee revenue before treating throughput as evidence of demand.
Related: blockspace, layer-1, active-addresses, modular-blockchain