Most records have "reconstructed solutions", where people recreate the solution from start to end. You could get the number of moves that way, though I couldn't

Most records have "reconstructed solutions", where people recreate the solution from start to end. You could get the number of moves that way, though I couldn't find a dataset of them. > Are the world records getting faster due to quicker execution of same number of moves, or using fewer moves thanks to better algorithms? My novice understanding is that it's the former. The algorithms haven't changed very much in the past 20 years or so, maybe a few variations that are more ergonomic. After learning all the algs, it's a matter of improving look-ahead (making sure you know what alg to perform next while your current is wrapping up) and otherwise increasing your turns per second (TPS). The records dropped quite drastically a few years back, which is likely coming from advancements in cubing hardware. Adding magnets to prevent overshoot while turning helped people speed up quite a bit.