The end result of a shocking — and largely ideological — disagreement amongst Bitcoin node operators has resolved in favor of the common consumer.
For the primary time in years, the minimal bitcoin (BTC) transaction payment is simply 1/tenth of 1 satoshi per digital byte (vByte).
Many blocks at the moment are paying half the transaction charges versus their median stage only one month in the past. Furthermore, a big proportion of blocks throughout the previous few days are solely partially full, that means that even these new, infinitesimal payment charges are usually not attracting sufficient transactions to replenish each block.
1/1 billionth of a bitcoin
For many of Bitcoin Core’s existence, builders of this node software program package deal defaulted to a minimal of 1 satoshi — equal to 1/100 millionth of a BTC — for transactions to achieve entry into its fashionable reminiscence pool (mempool) from which miners choose transactions for blockchain inclusion.
Nonetheless, as firms inserted industrial pursuits into these mempool policy-making discussions, Core builders started advocating for enjoyable not solely the one-satoshi ground but additionally the mempool’s storage limitations for information unrelated to the on-chain motion of BTC.
Each initiatives prevailed over conservative opposition.
By early June, Core builders introduced unprecedented information storage easements for arbitrary media, code, and industrial inscriptions.
By mid-July, BTC mining pool operators additionally started slashing their minimal payment charge 90% from one to 1/10 of a satoshi.
The pie was presupposed to develop
Champions of these initiatives thought that these two easements would have welcomed new customers onto the Bitcoin community. The concept was to develop the pie itself — even when miners’ slice of the pie shrunk.
The objective was extra customers, extra transactions, extra information, extra charges, and extra all the things.
As a substitute, exercise ranges barely budged. The one factor that meaningfully modified — downward — was the transaction payment charge.
As extra pool operators and node operators modified their Bitcoin Core software program to just accept charges 90% decrease than one satoshi into their mempool, the chart of % of miner income from BTC charges has declined to its lowest stage since 2022: 0.6%.
Many professional-spam arguments had been about making miners more cash.
Now, as a way to have earned barely extra within the quick time period by routing across the min TX relay filter, they’ve bottomed out the transaction payment market and are making persistently much less from transaction charges as a… pic.twitter.com/xs2BtrTKZF
— Mechanic #FixTheFilters #300kb (@GrassFedBitcoin) August 4, 2025
Bitcoin transaction charges have bottomed out
Thankfully, Bitcoin’s hard-coded coinbase reward per block — payable separate from user-donated transaction charges — continues to pay miners the overwhelming majority of their income. Yesterday, in truth, it paid 99.4% of miners’ income.
In fact, this coinbase reward halves each 4 years, so completely low transaction charges are in the end unsustainable for Bitcoin’s long-term safety.
