Miners are happy, while we suffer?

[Finestream]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-miners-double-revenue-fees-have-spiked-over-200-in-10-days-since-the-halving/

Bitcoin (BTC) miners earned 44% more in transaction fees in the nine days since the halving than they did for the whole of April. If this continues miners will have more than doubled their income from transaction fees going forward.

Please share your thoughts.

[1715060215]

1715060215

[1715060215]

1715060215

[1715060215]

1715060215

[bitmover]

Fees are high because volatility is too high. A lot of traders are sending bitcoin to and out exchanges... this always happens.

But you can still make transactions with low fees. I made a transaction recently with 10 sat/byte that was confirmed in a few hours. You just need to be patient.

Miners are not making a lot of money due to halving. Fees are just a small part of the reward:

look this block for example
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/0000000000000000000e64f2f8a06ffeb03cb4a597fdcb11f43ee9bf16decbc3

Block Reward
6.25000000 BTC
Fee Reward
0.13771274 BTC

[UmerIdrees]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-miners-double-revenue-fees-have-spiked-over-200-in-10-days-since-the-halving/

Bitcoin (BTC) miners earned 44% more in transaction fees in the nine days since the halving than they did for the whole of April. If this continues miners will have more than doubled their income from transaction fees going forward.

Please share your thoughts.

Even miners are not happy because the block reward is halved. We do have to pay extra fee if we want to confirm our transactions quickly. Sometimes due to the nature of the transactions, it is not possible to wait for 6hr or more, so you have to put a high fee in order to confirm it.

[NeuroticFish]

1. We had plenty of occasions to consolidate the small inputs for times like this.
2. The fees are not big if you are not in extreme hurry.
3. We all have to learn to do on-chain transactions only when it's necessary.


For some reasons (either block reward halving, either drought in China = electricity problems) some miners have stopped. This means that for some while (until the next difficulty recalculation) the existing miners will have a more difficult job. And since the reward is decreased, I don't think that they are so much happy.

[stadus]

I think the transaction has drop today, the high fees was just temporary but bitcoin's transaction fee is really high compared to altcoins, so if you are not comfortable with it and you like your transactions to confirm faster, you better use an altcoins.

About miners fee, i think it's kinda technical, what we see most of the time is the transaction fee we charge when we are transaction.
Like for an instance, if we choose 10 blocks in previous days, we will pay like 5 to 6 usd, but now we can only pay over a dollar.

I am not an expert on how to compute all these things, but this is just what I also notice when making a transaction, for ordinary people, we can't help but notice it and just complain to ourselves.

[avikz]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-miners-double-revenue-fees-have-spiked-over-200-in-10-days-since-the-halving/

Bitcoin (BTC) miners earned 44% more in transaction fees in the nine days since the halving than they did for the whole of April. If this continues miners will have more than doubled their income from transaction fees going forward.

Please share your thoughts.

Neither miners are happy after the halving, nor regular users are happy with the transaction fees. However the increase in fees is caused by more number of transactions. You can easily check the number of transactions using blockchain website. Use the below link,

https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions-per-block

It is showing a steady increase since last 30 days. So if the number of transactions is high, the network becomes congested which in turn pushes both fees and confirmation time to another notch higher. Definitely not happy with it but we will have to deal with it!

[Finestream]

Thanks for sharing your opinion guys, appreciated it, I've learn a lot.

Definitely not happy with it but we will have to deal with it!

There is no choice but to deal with it, although I don't like how high the fees recently but most of my transactions are in bitcoin, so I just hope the fee will reduce and will be reasonable for ordinary users like me, paying 5 usd fee for a very small transaction is not reasonable at all, I know that we can reduce the fee but sometimes I have no choice as I want my transaction to confirm faster.

I think the transaction has drop today, the high fees was just temporary

I haven't made a transaction today, I will find out once I made a transaction. Thanks for sharing.

but bitcoin's transaction fee is really high compared to altcoins, so if you are not comfortable with it and you like your transactions to confirm faster, you better use an altcoins.

That would be my last option, but like I said, most of my business transaction online is on bitcoin.

[minairia3]

Even miners are not happy because the block reward is halved. We do have to pay extra fee if we want to confirm our transactions quickly. Sometimes due to the nature of the transactions, it is not possible to wait for 6hr or more, so you have to put a high fee in order to confirm it.

This is both at disadvantage for miners and users. I cant transact also lately due to very high fees. We can use accelerator but Im actually hoping thay we could go back to a normal hashrate that fees is not like this. If bitcoin price increases then this will surely continue unless more miners will come and help but with recent halving I doubt some will do probably many havr quit already due to the halved rewards.

[Kakmakr]

People need to understand that the protocol was developed to always balance out things. Now that the Block reward has halved again, miners are more reliant on fees and the bitcoin price has been up and down lately, so the traders are making a fortune. They buy when the price is low and they sell when the price are a little bit higher.

So these traders are generating a lot of small transactions and the higher the transaction volume, the higher the transaction fee will be to get it confirmed on the Blockchain. (This is not applicable to people using exchanges to trade, because those tx's are done within the exchange software/database and the only on-chain transactions are the ones where traders send coins to the exchange or remove it from the exchange) 

[o_e_l_e_o]

while miners are doubling their income

Miners are absolutely not doubling their income. The increase in revenue they are earning from the higher fees is a fraction of the decrease in revenue from the halving of the block reward.

so I just hope the fee will reduce and will be reasonable for ordinary users like me, paying 5 usd fee for a very small transaction is not reasonable at all, I know that we can reduce the fee but sometimes I have no choice as I want my transaction to confirm faster.

At present, a fee of 3 sats/vbyte will get you in the next block. That works out to less than 10 cents for an average transaction. If you need instant confirmations without the high fee during times when the mempool is very full, as it has been for the last week, then you should look in to use the Lightning Network.

I haven't made a transaction today, I will find out once I made a transaction. Thanks for sharing.

The best way to visualize the fees is by using this site: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,8h. Scroll down to the third graph "Mempool size in MB". You will see the mempool is full of transactions at 1 and 2 sats/vbyte. Anything from 3 sats/vbyte and higher is being confirmed with each block.

but with recent halving I doubt some will do probably many havr quit already due to the halved rewards.

Miners mined with less reward than this for a long time. From the beginning of bitcoin's life up until September 2017 when the price crossed $4,500 for the first time, miners were receiving less block reward in terms of USD than they are just now. Any time in the last 4 years that bitcoin was less than $4,500, miners received less block reward than they are just now. And through all of this, bitcoin worked just fine. It just needs a little time for the difficulty adjustments to happen, and all will be back to normal.

[vycl87]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-miners-double-revenue-fees-have-spiked-over-200-in-10-days-since-the-halving/

Bitcoin (BTC) miners earned 44% more in transaction fees in the nine days since the halving than they did for the whole of April. If this continues miners will have more than doubled their income from transaction fees going forward.

Please share your thoughts.

The number of Bitcoin transactions has always been variable. Miners fee may have increased slightly since more transactions took place as a result of high volatility in the post-halving period. However, it should not be forgotten that the reward per block has decreased by 50%. The reward, which was previously 12.5BTC in each block, is now 6.25BTC.

The miners fee that miners charge in one block is too small to make up the difference. In other words, miners' reward for transaction fees only increased. But the block reward is now less. So this is not a very good thing for miners. Also, it would not be fair to say that we suffered in this process. The BTC price is fine, except for a few short-term dump.

[kryptqnick]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-miners-double-revenue-fees-have-spiked-over-200-in-10-days-since-the-halving/

Bitcoin (BTC) miners earned 44% more in transaction fees in the nine days since the halving than they did for the whole of April. If this continues miners will have more than doubled their income from transaction fees going forward.

Please share your thoughts.

The fees are jumping, and they are indeed higher than I expected they would be. I've recently sent 0.05 BTC and paid $15! But the peak of the fees was 5 days ago, and now they are 50% lower, according to Bitinfocharts. At the same time, average transaction fees since the very end of April are higher than they've been over the previous 10 months. Maybe it's a temporary thing with more transactions than usual because halving brought attention to Bitcoin. Plus, it seems from the thread that miners aren't doubling income, so it's neither good enough for us nor for them. It is alarming to see the fees on the rise, and it brings up the question of cheap small transactions once again... Miners do need to eventually learn to live off the transaction fees, so those can be expected to increase significantly...

[serjent05]

I also think that miners aren't happy after the halving even though there is a spike on the transaction fee.  Imagine from the x amount they are mining it became x/2 after the halving and the price does not consolidate on it because it doesn't increase by 2x.

We all know that transaction fee depends on how many transactions were waiting to be confirmed, I don't think this as an added issue since this problem had been there ever since.  Whenever there are lots of pending transactions, the tx fee always increases due to the "competition" where the highest bidder will be confirmed first.

[coolcoinz]

Are you really going to use the word "suffer" to describe the necessity of paying a transaction fee?
Does it mean that you're suffering because you have to pay for a train ticket or a parking space? Let's not exaggerate please.
The fees might be high if you're looking to send a dollar or 2 in BTC, but for the rest of us who use it for larger transactions paying a dollar to pay for something worth 1k USD is completely fine and even cheaper than using PayPal for the same thing.
The world is not equal and while some people in Ghana earn less than 1 USD per hour of work, people in the EU or the US get 10 times more. What may seem like a lot to some of us is dust to others.

[shield132]

Roger Ver, Bitcoin has 40x higher value than your bitcoin cash. Even XPR has gained more trust among users than bitcoin cash.
Bitcoin.com isn't reliable source of informations, according to them miner's revenue has doubled but in reality bitmover showed you perfect example of what rewards miners get from one block vs from collected tx fees.
Right now tx fees are divided into three part:
1. Most transactions are sent with 1-12 satoshis per byte.
2. Then comes transactions with 132-150 satoshis per byte.
3. And finally seems there are some people willing to pay more than 253 satoshis per byte.

It's not an alarming news but I think everything will fade away soon and fees will return to normal but they may rise again when price goes higher.
Believe me, miners aren't happy with current situation. They want bitcoin's price to rise rather than mining fees cause it's more beneficial for them and for crypto community in overall.

[Baofeng]

And I don't think that miners are doing it intentionally, it's just the economics of bitcoin mining. When mempool are clogged then fees are going to increase, simply as that. So if you're not in a hurry then you can probably wait. And there are wallets though that simply balloon fees. So if you are using a wallet wherein you can manually set the transaction fee, then by all means take advantage of that feature.

[Sanugarid]

while miners are doubling their income

Miners are absolutely not doubling their income. The increase in revenue they are earning from the higher fees is a fraction of the decrease in revenue from the halving of the block reward.

If you guys think that they were generating more than before the 3rd halving then you might wanna check their maintaining expenses for hardware upgrades. Halving just basically cut the supply but increased the block rewarding, not too wrong for bitcoin miners, we are just looking into their generating revenue.

but with recent halving I doubt some will do probably many havr quit already due to the halved rewards.

Miners mined with less reward than this for a long time. From the beginning of bitcoin's life up until September 2017 when the price crossed $4,500 for the first time, miners were receiving less block reward in terms of USD than they are just now. Any time in the last 4 years that bitcoin was less than $4,500, miners received less block reward than they are just now. And through all of this, bitcoin worked just fine. It just needs a little time for the difficulty adjustments to happen, and all will be back to normal.

What drives the transaction fees so high is the volatility of the market, the price keeps on spiking and transactions are being made everywhere at expensive rates. I think the adjustments you are saying will be here after a long time, since there has been injecting huge amounts of fiat and the market and futures trading is enormous these days. I love the volatility of the market right now coz I'm a trader, what really bugs me is the transaction fee, but then it's alright.

[Tipstar]

I think we should look for alternative if we can't change what's happening. Limit bitcoin transactions and if you need rapid transactions, look for alterantives.
Maybe ease a bit of strain by moving to segwit, or why not try lightning network. If that don't satisfy us, there are so called improvement on bitcoin blokchain by forking it. They might be doing great with fees. Or even try different alts that are promising feeless transfers.

[BrewMaster]

i think the halving contributed to the current fee situation and the mempool bigger backlog but it is not the biggest reason. the main reason remains the price rise and traders flooding the network and i wouldn't dismiss the possibility of an orchestrated spam attack against bitcoin right after halving.

Roger Ver, Bitcoin has 40x higher value than your bitcoin cash. Even XPR has gained more trust among users than bitcoin cash.

trust? i don't think so. both of them are pump and dump centralized shitcoins in the eyes of the community. the only reason why anybody has ever touched these altcoins has been their pumps and possibility of gaining some profit. that includes altcoin exchanges too.

[Velkro]

Miners are happy, while we suffer?
I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

Cant agree here at all, at all.
We are not suffering. Fees payed to miners are used to secure Bitcoin directly. Think about it like that.
Miners not earning much from fees where there is low traffic in network so most of the year. In case of more attention Bitcoin receive traffic grows and then miners earn which allows them to continue securing network at very high level.

Its all connected, it works to benefit Bitcoin.

[Yogee]

And I don't think that miners are doing it intentionally, it's just the economics of bitcoin mining. When mempool are clogged then fees are going to increase, simply as that. So if you're not in a hurry then you can probably wait. And there are wallets though that simply balloon fees. So if you are using a wallet wherein you can manually set the transaction fee, then by all means take advantage of that feature.

Will transaction fees automatically increase when mempool are full or clogged? I don't think that's what you mean when you said "When mempool are clogged then fees are going to increase, simply as that" but a total beginner could understand it differently.


I'm sorry if this is not 100% related to the topic but I remember reading an old article about what happens when a mempool is almost full. A minimum fee is set by the node when it's close to full capacity. If an incoming transaction with an attached fee less than the minimum, it will be rejected. Only transactions with equal to or above minimum will be accepted. Is that still the case today?

[DoublerHunter]

^ Definitely the miners are not happy because of the rewards they are getting nowadays due to halving nor the users who do transactions and pay higher transaction fees but that only depends on how quick our transaction we want to be done. Aside from the volatility volume of the transaction also affects the transaction fee but when you do it off-peak then you may pay a higher fee and faster transaction. Nevertheless, all these are temporary when all miners started to work including those who suspend their mining because of the halving probably the transaction fees will go down again and at a faster rate.

[Ucy]

Hope miners don't get used to the gains from high fees and forget that low fee and fast transaction is important too.
This problem probably wouldn't have occurred if price has gone up as it should be.  Altering or removing any of the basic Bitcoin/Crypto principles (deflation in this case) will certainly have future consequences for the cryptocurrency.

[Becky666]

Hope miners don't get used to the gains from high fees and forget that low fee and fast transaction is important too.
This problem probably wouldn't have occurred if price has gone up as it should be.  Altering or removing any of the basic Bitcoin/Crypto principles (deflation in this case) will certainly have future consequences for the cryptocurrency.

Miners aren't the cause of the high transaction we're experiencing now  nor the Bitcoin crypto principles change, but, the cause of this high transaction fees can be trace to congestion of transaction on Blockchain. This isn't funny though but let be calm while the outgoing and incoming Bitcoin transactions get low to free this Blockchain. Personally, I can't see anything like alterations on Bitcoin principles so far. We must still get through this high transaction fee, and forge ahead with Bitcoin.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Will transaction fees automatically increase when mempool are full or clogged?

Yes. As more and more transactions fill the mempool, then more and more wallets will set ever higher fees to try to out compete each other and get their transactions confirmed first, and so the fee increases, sometimes very rapidly. Wallets and websites which have automatic fee estimation algorithms are notoriously bad at suggesting an appropriate fee, and too many people relying on these instead of viewing the mempool for themselves is what causes the fee to increase so rapidly when the mempool starts to fill up.

A minimum fee is set by the node when it's close to full capacity. If an incoming transaction with an attached fee less than the minimum, it will be rejected. Only transactions with equal to or above minimum will be accepted. Is that still the case today?

Correct. The parameters in question are maxmempool and mempoolminfee. The maximum mempool size default for each node is 300 MB, but obviously nodes can configure this individually. Once a node reaches capacity, any transaction below the set mempoolminfee will not enter the mempool, and any transactions above the minimum will push a transaction or transactions with a lower fee rate than it out of the individual mempool as necessary to free up space for the higher fee transaction.

[stompix]

i think the halving contributed to the current fee situation and the mempool bigger backlog but it is not the biggest reason. the main reason remains the price rise and traders flooding the network and i wouldn't dismiss the possibility of an orchestrated spam attack against bitcoin right after halving.

The halving has cut the reward for miners, it happened in the middle of an epoch so the difficulty retarget wasn't accurate as it reflected a drop for only half of the period and we have to wait for another one so the block time will start coming closer to the designed 10 mins.
Right now, in the lasts 24 hours, there are 124 blocks mined instead of 144 which means on average around 40k less transactions capacity for the day.
Since the start of this era on the 20th, we're down almost 130 blocks, that's close to a day lost of transactions in 5 days.

There is no spam attack happening, it's just diminished capacity, and it will go like this if the price doesn't increase for another 10-12 days.
Fortunately for us a spam attack right now won't solve anything for the other shitcoins either, I think they have learned their lesson, if bitcoin goes down so will they! Besides, they run also really tight margins with their mining operation, at attack would really kill the golden goose.

A slight jump in price to 12k might convince a few miners to turn back on older gear and we could go over this retarget faster, till then...nothing to do but wait.

[Jamesdila1]

The bitcoin fees have exponentially increased over the years and this can absolutely pose a threat to the adoption of bitcoin thus its growth
many people are shifting towards other crypto currency projects
Miners also suffer from this because their reward from blocks have significantly decreased

[joinfree]

Lol, still comparing the transaction fees involved with fiat payment system bitcoin is way better. In addition, this happens when the market kicks into extreme volatility and everybody is trying to send bitcoins from one end to another. It increases the load of transactions needed to be confirmed and miners now have to be selective with the urgent ones and those mostly come with high transaction fees attached to it.

[Sadlife]

The fees increase must be due to congestion miners that's why is pretty much recommend to use Segwit transactions to lower fees it is a second layer solution that uses LN (Lightning Network) to make the speed of transactions faster and much more cheaper.

[hatshepsut93]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

What do you mean by "grow"? If you're talking about the price, then no - it won't affect the price much. In fact, the fees are high because a lot of traders move their coins between, in and out of exchanges, thus creating demand for the blockspace. If you mean if it would help grow the network by increasing the number of miners, then the answer is again no - such demand for blockspace is temporary and transactions fees still represent only a fraction of block's rewards, but in the far future the fees will outweigh block rewards and will indeed sustain the network.

[TopT3ns]

The fees increase must be due to congestion miners that's why is pretty much recommend to use Segwit transactions to lower fees it is a second layer solution that uses LN (Lightning Network) to make the speed of transactions faster and much more cheaper.

when shipping costs go up as is the case now it is the effect of the increasing level of difficulty that occurs at the bitcoin mining site which makes it increasingly difficult to get bitcoin, indeed only a few people are still familiar with this segwit method so that not many use it despite the way it is quite effective.

[Yamifoud]

I think we should look for alternative if we can't change what's happening. Limit bitcoin transactions and if you need rapid transactions, look for alterantives.
Maybe ease a bit of strain by moving to segwit, or why not try lightning network. If that don't satisfy us, there are so called improvement on bitcoin blokchain by forking it. They might be doing great with fees. Or even try different alts that are promising feeless transfers.

It somehow fees surprises small market players after halving and that is the result of numbers of miners who stop their operation. But if we are not in a hurry, we can still use a small number of sats to fuel the transaction at this time. It was noticed then that the fees are lowering down compared in the past days which probably means that some of them are turning back.
It is to believe that miners are manipulating the market, it somehow giving no option for us especially when we are in need to transfer some BTC. This strategy will something give help to cover up their expenses in order to survive and quite they are successful.

[BITCOIN4X]

Yes. As more and more transactions fill the mempool, then more and more wallets will set ever higher fees to try to out compete each other and get their transactions confirmed first, and so the fee increases, sometimes very rapidly. Wallets and websites which have automatic fee estimation algorithms are notoriously bad at suggesting an appropriate fee, and too many people relying on these instead of viewing the mempool for themselves is what causes the fee to increase so rapidly when the mempool starts to fill up.

If so, the increase in transaction costs is the desire of the sender himself who wants a faster transaction. But the impact of this behavior has caused many people to spend 130-140 sat/ byte to send bitcoin worth $60. I also dont really understand why the recommendation fees from cellphone wallets are so high and it makes us quite frustrated thinking about the costs.

So far I only know that price volatility has caused transaction costs to be high, but I just learned that this was the desire of the sender himself who wanted the transaction to be fast. Is there a way to prevent it ?

[freedomgo]

The fees is a good indication that the market is bullish as it would result to market congestion, that is brought by investors are traders who constantly make transaction, you are not the only one who noticed the sudden increase of fee, but that's it, we need to deal with it and I guess it would not last long the market will be back to its norms again.

[rathaha10]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-miners-double-revenue-fees-have-spiked-over-200-in-10-days-since-the-halving/

Bitcoin (BTC) miners earned 44% more in transaction fees in the nine days since the halving than they did for the whole of April. If this continues miners will have more than doubled their income from transaction fees going forward.

Please share your thoughts.

to be honest, it's has been really disheartening since the over hyped halving we all anticipated for happened, like it was meant to improve and balance the the mining activity but all i can see for now is that it's  making miners richer. I tried sending few dollars worth of bitcoin and the charges wasn't friendly... something really need to be done by satoshi or whoever still control btc because i don't even know what to literally believe in this space again, everything is just going south with each day passing

[yazher]

It's not that high enough for us to suffer compared to their hard work and perseverance throughout their BTC carriers. In this little amount we can help them on their work because those little amounts increase in a transaction will help them a lot if we just know. so instead of complaining let's just learn how can we be thankful for them because there are few of these guys left right now. the others have already left them and decide to sell every mining components they have. I wonder if there will be another option if there will be no miners left around mining some BTC.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I also dont really understand why the recommendation fees from cellphone wallets are so high and it makes us quite frustrated thinking about the costs.

Because the algorithms they use for estimating a fee are poor. When fees have been low for several days, then if you select "high priority" or "fast" or whatever your wallet calls its highest fee, then it looks back over the last few days, sees fees of 1-2 sats/vbyte, and correctly gives you a fee of 3 sats/vbyte, which remains cheap but still gets you confirmed quickly. When fees have been as high as 150 sats/vbyte over the last few days, then your wallet sees that and recommends a much higher fee than is necessary, even when blocks are currently filled with 1-2 sats/vbyte transactions. Other wallets see your transaction with a high fee, and so also go higher to out compete your transaction. The cycle bounces back and forth between wallets and websites, and it takes a long time for them to cool down and reduce their recommended fees again.

If we look at https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,2h it becomes obvious to see. A block is emptying the mempool down to 2 sats/vbyte transactions. At that point, a fee of 3 sats/vbyte will put you within 0.07 MB of the tip of the mempool. Within 5 minutes, to stay within 0.07 MB of the tip the fee would now be 180 sats/vbyte. That is completely unnecessary, and if all those people actually took 5 seconds to look at the mempool instead of just accepting the fee their wallet told them to use, they could have saved ~170 sats/vbyte in fees.

Is there a way to prevent it ?

Unfortunately, there's not much you can do as an individual. As long as large portions of the community just use whatever fee their wallet tells them, such rapid increases in the feerate as I've described above will be commonplace. I would recommend looking at the mempool yourself using the above link when making a transaction though. If you are happy to wait 2-3 blocks instead of 1, you could reduce your fee from 180 sats/vbyte to 3 sats/vbyte.

[Finestream]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

What do you mean by "grow"? If you're talking about the price, then no - it won't affect the price much. In fact, the fees are high because a lot of traders move their coins between, in and out of exchanges, thus creating demand for the blockspace. If you mean if it would help grow the network by increasing the number of miners, then the answer is again no - such demand for blockspace is temporary and transactions fees still represent only a fraction of block's rewards, but in the far future the fees will outweigh block rewards and will indeed sustain the network.

Yes, I am talking with the price because I was thinking that if users will shift to other coins due to the high transaction fee of bitcoin, that will not help on our goal to increase the adoption, I am mainly taking here about the future of bitcoin because I am concern about it, but with your explanation guys and my experience now, I think I can say that the fee was back to normal, I was just surprise that time and that article I read added it so I was able to make this thread and ask for the opinion of the people here.

[fiulpro]

Unfortunately I do not think that miners are happy .
We should understand that most of the small miners are out of the business because of halving and therefore this increase in fee was their failed attempt to keep in line with everyone.
They have to keep the network running at the same time if they won't be able to earn much , won't be able to pay bills and at the same time make some money it will be problematic for us only.
Maybe this was done to neutralize the decrease in hash rate that was due to halving.
At the same time I do think we have nothing to worry about  since in a matter of days the issue should be taken care of otherwise people will stop using it .

Plus Bitcoins can never grow with this high fee when they have competitive market out there , there is not just one cryptocurrency but rather 100's of them .

[o_e_l_e_o]

therefore this increase in fee was their failed attempt to keep in line with everyone.

No it wasn't. Miners do not dictate fees. Fees are collectively decided upon by the community using bitcoin. If people want to try to out compete each other's transactions and push fees higher and higher, they are free to do that. If everyone decides to just make transactions at 1 sat/vbyte and be patient then they are free to do that too. Miners choose the highest fee transactions to maximize their profits, but they don't decide what those fees should be.

Plus Bitcoins can never grow with this high fee when they have competitive market out there , there is not just one cryptocurrency but rather 100's of them .

Of course it can, be using second layer solutions such as Lightning Network. In the future, it is entirely possible that fees remain high but the only transactions which have to pay these fees and the opening or closing of Lightning channels or large transactions of (for example) over $50,000 or more, and everything else is just settled on Lightning instantaneously and essentially feeless.

[dothebeats]

Fee increase often happens when there is a lot going on in the market, or if there is a significant change in price that traders are transferring funds like crazy in order to take advantage of the situation. On days where there i little to almost no market activity, fees aren't really that high, and at times you can even send one with 1 sat (I am guilty of doing this) and it will still push through in an hour or so. Anyways, it's just that there are many dudes who are trying to get their transaction on high priority than others, hence the rise in fees. It will subside, as it always had in the past.

[buwaytress]

Personally, I've been around long enough (and that's not so long ago) to remember how it felt like sending 0-fee transactions and still get it confirmed.

And for the majority of my transactions, I still enjoy spending 1 sat/byte, and still get it confirmed within hours, at most days, and for non-urgent transactions I'm willing to wait.

Miners aren't the only ones happy. I'm happy the network, even after upgrades, still has so much demand. That's good news for me, and it puts the pressure on service providers to upgrade to SW (they slowly are) and then on to Lightning. Scalability problems are good news for me.

[Yogee]

Will transaction fees automatically increase when mempool are full or clogged?

Yes. As more and more transactions fill the mempool, then more and more wallets will set ever higher fees to try to out compete each other and get their transactions confirmed first, and so the fee increases, sometimes very rapidly. Wallets and websites which have automatic fee estimation algorithms are notoriously bad at suggesting an appropriate fee, and too many people relying on these instead of viewing the mempool for themselves is what causes the fee to increase so rapidly when the mempool starts to fill up.

A minimum fee is set by the node when it's close to full capacity. If an incoming transaction with an attached fee less than the minimum, it will be rejected. Only transactions with equal to or above minimum will be accepted. Is that still the case today?

Correct. The parameters in question are maxmempool and mempoolminfee. The maximum mempool size default for each node is 300 MB, but obviously nodes can configure this individually. Once a node reaches capacity, any transaction below the set mempoolminfee will not enter the mempool, and any transactions above the minimum will push a transaction or transactions with a lower fee rate than it out of the individual mempool as necessary to free up space for the higher fee transaction.

Okay, I appreciate the explanation. I was thinking a condition has to be met before fees increase everytime mempool will be clogged. In this case, the condition is senders have to set a higher fee on their own if they want their transaction to be on the next block faster than others. That is probably the case 99% of the time but there's a 1% or less chance that everyone would be willing to just wait. It's the reason why I thought it's not 100% automatic. But if it's the node that sets a minimum fee everytime it's close to full capacity, that makes increase in the transaction fee automatic then.

[BlacksmithCorporation]

I think that although miners now earn twice as much from transaction fees, that does not offset the deficit from the bitcoin halving event. In the long run, they can earn more from transaction fees to make up for the deficit.

[Betwrong]

Fees are high because volatility is too high. A lot of traders are sending bitcoin to and out exchanges... this always happens.

But you can still make transactions with low fees. I made a transaction recently with 10 sat/byte that was confirmed in a few hours. You just need to be patient.

Miners are not making a lot of money due to halving. Fees are just a small part of the reward:

look this block for example
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/0000000000000000000e64f2f8a06ffeb03cb4a597fdcb11f43ee9bf16decbc3

Block Reward
6.25000000 BTC
Fee Reward
0.13771274 BTC

I think it is mostly like this normally, but keep in mind that today there are also blocks like one of the recent ones, Block 631659, with 1,733 txs in it, and a pretty high fee reward:



I'm personally surprised that blocks with lees number of transactions are getting higher fee rewards, but that's how it is.

Here's another example, Block 631663, 1,336 txs, 1.3 BTC fee reward:



Overall for almost all recent blocks the fee reward was above 0.5 BTC, with that around(or higher than) 2 BTC for some of them.

[lumeire]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-miners-double-revenue-fees-have-spiked-over-200-in-10-days-since-the-halving/

Bitcoin (BTC) miners earned 44% more in transaction fees in the nine days since the halving than they did for the whole of April. If this continues miners will have more than doubled their income from transaction fees going forward.

Please share your thoughts.

Bitcoins transaction fees will lower again when the pending transactions in the mempool gets reduced, until then the average transaction fee will remain high. But this is the reason why I don't use bitcoins for transactions, I only store my bitcoins for investment and use ethereum for the purpose of transactions and daily use as they have pretty cheap transactions as compared to using bitcoins. Also the mining pools take the transaction fees from the blocks and not the miners, so miners are still getting only the block mining reward for their work, and since it has been halved by the halving I guess miners are also hit by the bitcoins block reward halving.

[btc_angela]

The fees is a good indication that the market is bullish as it would result to market congestion, that is brought by investors are traders who constantly make transaction, you are not the only one who noticed the sudden increase of fee, but that's it, we need to deal with it and I guess it would not last long the market will be back to its norms again.

I don't think that it is a indication that the market is bullish, the reason is that there are miners dropping out of business. So reduce of miners means increase of fee and not necessarily equate to a bullish signal. 2017 fee reconstruction is different though, we can't compare it to the situation we have right now.

We reached it's peak back then that's why the network is congested. But I would agree that the market fee will normalised again.

[kemoglo]

Fees are high because volatility is too high. A lot of traders are sending bitcoin to and out exchanges... this always happens.

But you can still make transactions with low fees. I made a transaction recently with 10 sat/byte that was confirmed in a few hours. You just need to be patient.

Miners are not making a lot of money due to halving. Fees are just a small part of the reward:

look this block for example
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/0000000000000000000e64f2f8a06ffeb03cb4a597fdcb11f43ee9bf16decbc3

Block Reward
6.25000000 BTC
Fee Reward
0.13771274 BTC

I got sent about $500 with 4 sats/byte, it took a whole week to clear, but it cleared! Low fee transactions are definitely still possible, just manage your expectations for clearing times

[hatshepsut93]

Yes, I am talking with the price because I was thinking that if users will shift to other coins due to the high transaction fee of bitcoin, that will not help on our goal to increase the adoption, I am mainly taking here about the future of bitcoin because I am concern about it, but with your explanation guys and my experience now, I think I can say that the fee was back to normal, I was just surprise that time and that article I read added it so I was able to make this thread and ask for the opinion of the people here.

There's a paradox called "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded", which perfectly illustrates the situation with fees and concern like yours that people will switch to other coins. If people would start switching away from Bitcoin, then fees would go down, and the rest wouldn't have a reason to switch.

But there's a lot of other factors too. Most of the volume can be attributed to traders and not people buying things, so obviously traders can't switch away from Bitcoin. Also switching to other coins isn't a good decision, fees is not everything, there's also network security, price stability, future forecast and so on, and Bitcoin is far superior to alts in those fields.

[stompix]

I'm personally surprised that blocks with lees number of transactions are getting higher fee rewards, but that's how it is.

Full blocks with fewer transactions mean wither a large number of inputs or output, since in this time no normal user is consolidating his wallet those mostly come from exchanges doing their payouts or moving their coins, and since for them time is essential and users already pay for these fees they afford to pay more. For example, one of my deposit waited for 12 hours before being confirmed at 10sat/b  but in the next blocks the exchange consolidated some 30-40 deposits and moved them with a fee of 50sat/b, more than triple what it would have taken to confirm it anyway.

I got sent about $500 with 4 sats/byte, it took a whole week to clear, but it cleared! Low fee transactions are definitely still possible, just manage your expectations for clearing times

For private stuff yeah, but you can't run a business like that.
Imagine a gambling site or exchange on which both deposits and withdrawals would take a week, nobody would use it.

[pawanjain]

This happens from time to time. I remember the transaction fees were huge in 2017 in the ICO era and the bitcoin blockchain was mostly congested during those days. But it's not that you have to mandatorily pay the high fees. You can still manage to make transactions with low fees but will have to wait patiently for the transaction to confirm. This is a temporary thing I guess and soon the fees will come back to normal.

[salamat700]

I have observed recently that the transaction fee for bitcoin transfers has significantly increase, I was wondering if this would help bitcoin to grow further if people are suffering from high fees while miners are doubling their income, is this the result of the halving we have been anticipating?

This is just another common occurrence in the Bitcoin network...whenever there is an uptick in volume of transactions we can expect also an increase in fees...more like the law on supply and demand in action. Fortunately, things will eventually subside and will be normal so that fees can be acceptable again. The recent halving actually means less income for miners as they are getting their money not really on fees.

[Questat]

This happens from time to time. I remember the transaction fees were huge in 2017 in the ICO era and the bitcoin blockchain was mostly congested during those days. But it's not that you have to mandatorily pay the high fees. You can still manage to make transactions with low fees but will have to wait patiently for the transaction to confirm. This is a temporary thing I guess and soon the fees will come back to normal.

That was the time that people don't really care since they are making money, the market was in bull run that time, people are coming in due to FOMO so the fee wasn't a big issue, it's different this time as only bitcoin rises but it wasn't stable, it only had some hype for awhile, back to normal now.

[arwin100]

This happens from time to time. I remember the transaction fees were huge in 2017 in the ICO era and the bitcoin blockchain was mostly congested during those days. But it's not that you have to mandatorily pay the high fees. You can still manage to make transactions with low fees but will have to wait patiently for the transaction to confirm. This is a temporary thing I guess and soon the fees will come back to normal.

That was the time that people don't really care since they are making money, the market was in bull run that time, people are coming in due to FOMO so the fee wasn't a big issue, it's different this time as only bitcoin rises but it wasn't stable, it only had some hype for awhile, back to normal now.

That's why we see less demand coming on it right now since some of the people are been worried to payed a huge fees for each transaction they made but all things will be back to normal once all things will be cleared on the network side since maybe this is effect brought up by the halving since this issue also occurs way back before and subside when the halving hype gone, But the one I hope right now is to see something good with alts and bitcoins so that it can create FOMO again to get a better start for next year.

[Rengga Jati]

Well, yeah. We already know that before and after Bitcoin halving, the fee is highly rising since January. The increase seems significantly related to the blocks for the transactions. The miners can prioritize the transactions that offer higher fees to be done first. Therefore, it means that the transaction fees should be changing and following the needs. Moreover currently, the high fees are also influenced by the heavy usage of the blocks, many people are doing transactions of bitcoin, and also the hype of the pump after halving.

In my opinion, it is fair enough. For, miners will be happy because they will get higher income from the fee of transactions. but, they also may not be happy at all because their reward of the blocks is halved. They lose half of the reward block. Probably, what will be done right now is the fee may be increasing again if there is still so heavy transaction usage.

[seoincorporation]

Miners don-t make real money from fees, even whit this 6.25btc blocks more than 90% of the income still coming from the block reward. So, if they earn the double amount or the triple will not make a big difference.

Miners can't be happy, the halving represents a big loss for them.

[Mianae]

Not trying to be on the side of the miners here but let us look at it from this direction. These miners pay heavily for the resources needed for mining which spans from mining rigs to electricity. And also let us not forget that mining difficulties is up its only wise to understand things from the side of the miners also and not just think about us the users. With every halving comes a reduction of their mining rewards, they can only make up for their costs through the fees.

[Kelvinid]

Not trying to be on the side of the miners here but let us look at it from this direction. These miners pay heavily for the resources needed for mining which spans from mining rigs to electricity. And also let us not forget that mining difficulties is up its only wise to understand things from the side of the miners also and not just think about us the users. With every halving comes a reduction of their mining rewards, they can only make up for their costs through the fees.

A reason that most users tend not to understand the situation. Halving won't be the advantage of miners, instead, that's their losses as the rewards cut into half. And only the fees that they collected is the way to help them out and could still run their business. Maybe it wasn't time to complain, instead, its time to understand the situation.

As I saw this, miners aren't happy with the fees, they only do this just to cover-ups and able to sustain.

[BuNga_cute]

It is true that miners are happy because rewards can be increased, inversely proportional to those of us who make transactions
have to pay expensive fees. But halving doesn't necessarily benefit miners, because halving reduces the number of rewards
obtained by miners. Therefore if halving occurs, the price of crypto must rise as well.

[Mianae]

Not trying to be on the side of the miners here but let us look at it from this direction. These miners pay heavily for the resources needed for mining which spans from mining rigs to electricity. And also let us not forget that mining difficulties is up its only wise to understand things from the side of the miners also and not just think about us the users. With every halving comes a reduction of their mining rewards, they can only make up for their costs through the fees.

A reason that most users tend not to understand the situation. Halving won't be the advantage of miners, instead, that's their losses as the rewards cut into half. And only the fees that they collected is the way to help them out and could still run their business. Maybe it wasn't time to complain, instead, its time to understand the situation.

As I saw this, miners aren't happy with the fees, they only do this just to cover-ups and able to sustain.

Yea you're right. Because given the fees collected, their cost for mining cannot be covered. We'll I do hope we all understand the situation and let live.

[Betwrong]

I'm personally surprised that blocks with lees number of transactions are getting higher fee rewards, but that's how it is.

Full blocks with fewer transactions mean wither a large number of inputs or output, since in this time no normal user is consolidating his wallet those mostly come from exchanges doing their payouts or moving their coins, and since for them time is essential and users already pay for these fees they afford to pay more. For example, one of my deposit waited for 12 hours before being confirmed at 10sat/b  but in the next blocks the exchange consolidated some 30-40 deposits and moved them with a fee of 50sat/b, more than triple what it would have taken to confirm it anyway.

Now I see. Thanks for the explanation!

But still ... I just checked the last 10 blocks, and most of them have around 1 BTC or above in transaction fees. So we can't say, at least these days, that "fees are just a small part of the reward", right?

I just wanted to draw attention to this fact, because normally, indeed, the coinbase transaction amounts to more than 95% of miner's cumulative reward. But not in the days like these, look at the Fee Rewards during the December 2017 crazy racing:

Block 500900 (2017-12-25)



Block 500036 (2017-12-19)

[supine]

Fees are high because volatility is too high. A lot of traders are sending bitcoin to and out exchanges... this always happens.

But you can still make transactions with low fees. I made a transaction recently with 10 sat/byte that was confirmed in a few hours. You just need to be patient.

Miners are not making a lot of money due to halving. Fees are just a small part of the reward:

look this block for example
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/0000000000000000000e64f2f8a06ffeb03cb4a597fdcb11f43ee9bf16decbc3

Block Reward
6.25000000 BTC
Fee Reward
0.13771274 BTC

The problem is that people nowadays couldn't tolerate the delay and wants to get their crypto instantly while complaining about high fee's.
Some of them doesn't want to wait so they wouldn't send their Bitcoin with a low transaction fee for a slower transaction.
The miners are the ones making it possible for us to do some transaction and we are the responsible for our transaction fee it is like we are the ones who would set up how much we like to pay them for each and every transaction that we would do.

[philanthropist67]

I still have no idea of how this fee system works in bitcoin. Sometimes minimum transaction fee is 1.1 usd while at times its 0.5 usd. It's very complex, will be happy if somebody can teach me this in simple words.

[FanatMonet]

Miners logically should slightly increase the commission, because their number has decreased after halving, which means that transaction processing may take longer than before. Therefore, the growth of the commission was quite expected.

[fullhdpixel]

Well, not really all the miners that are making a profit from what has just happened. There are so many of them that are no longer into business, because things stopped working for them after the halving. Some of them had miners that can't compete in the current market, so they had to change it. Those who couldn't change theirs and get a new one had no other option than to simply stop their mining business.

This happens all the time; last time there was a Halving the fee increased later, and to be sincere a lot of people were discouraged. I had to pay high fees for every transaction I made, and it was really annoying since I was doing transactions every week and paying the high fees.

[stompix]

~

Now I see. Thanks for the explanation!

But still ... I just checked the last 10 blocks, and most of them have around 1 BTC or above in transaction fees. So we can't say, at least these days, that "fees are just a small part of the reward", right?

Of course, it pales in comparison, for example the maximum in fees this month was around here

14 May from 00>24   114 Blocks > 145.5926338 in fees
Last 24h (this was on may 18th,                  127  Bloks > 123.5550215

Comparing with 2017, with 1276.387354 in 24 hours, 60% of the reward.
Now the best we did was around 10-15%

The only difference is that what was then a huge income on an already huge reward is now offering a breathing with hundreds of miners clicking to cents when it comes to revenue.

Miners logically should slightly increase the commission, because their number has decreased after halving, which means that transaction processing may take longer than before. Therefore, the growth of the commission was quite expected.

Miners don't have a commission and they have no way to impose one.

I still have no idea of how this fee system works in bitcoin. Sometimes minimum transaction fee is 1.1 usd while at times its 0.5 usd. It's very complex, will be happy if somebody can teach me this in simple words.

As simple as possible.
There is a limited amount of blocks that are mined daily with limited space for transactions.
When there are more transactions waiting to be confirmed than space the ones with higher fees get in, the ones with lower fees do not.

Think of it like the scalper thing, there are no tickets resellers when the stadium is empty, but at the Superbowl you pay three times the price to get in.

[Questat]

I still have no idea of how this fee system works in bitcoin. Sometimes minimum transaction fee is 1.1 usd while at times its 0.5 usd. It's very complex, will be happy if somebody can teach me this in simple words.

Check out this video : Bitcoin Fees Explained, short video explaining the fees, if you like to know more, there's a lot of related videos you can find in youtube, it's just too basic, everyone has to know about it.

disclaimer : video is not mind nor endorsing it for personal interest.