Originally Posted by elcruxio

The whole idea of sowing the environment with PTFE powder because of marginal lubrication gains is short sighted and frankly selfish. Also I'm not at all sure that high a ratio of PTFE in wax makes any sort of positive difference. And on top of that you could get the same effect with tungsten disulfide, molybdenum disulfide or graphite powder, none of which are microplastics.

On the topic of food grade paraffin vs candles, the food grade is better. Candle's paraffin oil content can be anything but it's definitely much higher than food grade paraffin. Also candles often contain stearic acid which hasn't been tested in chain use at all. But by my experience with stearic acid I'd maintain that it does not improve the quality of the wax as a chain lubricant.

There are different types of paraffin. Some are soft, some are hard, some have high melting point whereas others have low melting point and all said examples can have the same oil content. Then there is the group of microcrystalline waxes which are even more varied in properties.
If a company wants to make a good chain wax they'll contact a factory and ask them which of their waxes would work best as a chain wax. Or perhaps which combination of paraffins and microcrystalline waxes would work best. Perhaps not all wax manufacturers make the effort, but some definitely do. Rex and MSwax new formula are a pretty good indication of that.
The same goes with ski waxes. You could wax skis with paraffin, buuut they'd suck for certain conditions and they'd be fine in others. Or you could get temperature specific waxes which work for a given temperature range and moisture condition. Sadly chain waxes aren't quite there yet. There aren't winter and summer waxes yet.
To summarize, It's more complicated than just looking at paraffin and thinking it's one substance.

You mentioned yourself, that Oz Cycle test isn't scientific and it definitely isn't. There's more uncontrolled factors than there are controlled ones. Riding in the wild with uncontrolled power, uncontrolled conditions and wind, uncontrolled wet exposure, uncontrolled wax intervals, uncontrolled maintenance after wet rides, etc.
Also he didn't take zero measurements of the chains. He just checked that a completely different chain didn't have stretch as new. Yay...
And he used different bikes! Different tires! Did he have calibrated odometers or did he use GPS data?
I mean come on! One of the bikes is an aero bike with what seems to be a different fit. It's not exactly a huge stretch of imagination to come to a conclusion that perhaps the aero bike required less overall energy (and thus less overall wear) to achieve the 3000km mark. If the riding position on said bike is more aerodynamic the differences in "fuel mileage" and chain wear could be pretty darn significant. Also unsurprisingly he put the homemade wax on the aero bike...

The only conclusion you can take from that is that both chains had wax on them.

And even then the results are dated, because MSwax has a new formula which is miles better than the old one.

ps. as a small disclaimer, I haven't used any of the fancy schmancy expensive waxes. But attempting to discredit them with data that's not actual testing data when there is actual real testing data available just grinds my gears a bit.