File protected using default settings run slower than original file. Why?
With default settings, file is encoded several times after obfuscation. Encoded files require extra time to load first time they are referenced by “use” or “require” statements. This means that encoding decreases only startup time, but not run time. Encoding is an optional stage, it can be turned off or number of encoding iterations can be lowered to reduce startup time increase. Since encoding also increases file size considerably, it can also influence startup time if your project is run from slow media like CD.