How are network fees determined?

[venturabay]

Hello,
I'm sorry if somebody has already answered this before, but I don't have a whole lot of experience in the cryptocurrency field and was wondering about network fees. More specifically, how are the standard network fees (the ones that a wallet or exchange gives as presets) determined? They shift fairly consistently, but are they based on anything other than the average Bitcoin transaction's fees? If so, what is preventing somebody with a large amount of money in Bitcoin assets from sending lots of cheap transactions with high fees, making the overall network slower? I feel like this is where my logic is very flawed, so if somebody could explain what's wrong in the above few sentences that would be very appreciated.

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[1714991163]

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[1714991163]

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[Dave1]

Maybe this thread will help you out.

[1] How to calculate bitcoin transaction size and fees

Basically, the fees are determined depending on the transaction size (input/output).

Input is base on how many Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) you have. So the more input you have, the higher the fees you are going to pay.

You can also used this site for fee estimation: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,8h

[Charles-Tim]

More sites for fee estimation
https://mempool.space/
https://mempool.observer/

To learn more about bitcoin transaction fee:
Transactions (Compilation for newbies)
Minimizing bitcoin transaction fee

[Ucy]

 Bitcoin fee is also determined by network traffic. Fees tend to increase If network traffic is high/congested. If network isn't congested, fee remains low. Certain Wallet providers usually recommend fee higher than normal network fee to increase transaction speed.

[Gozie51]

Bitcoin fee is also determined by network traffic. Fees tend to increase If network traffic is high/congested. If network isn't congested, fee remains low. Certain Wallet providers usually recommend fee higher than normal network fee to increase transaction speed.

Also real life experience

I noticed also that bullish market lead to increase fees. Your
transaction can be trapped if your fee is very low because this happened to me but it will be confirmed when there is reduced volatility because fees can drop .

[bitmover]

Additionally to what other said  , transaction fees are determined by the user.

 You can pay from from 1 to 100  200 satoshi per byte.
What determine if your transaction is going to the next block or not is the network congestion

Forexample, If a lot of people are sending transactions with 100 sat byte,  your 1 sat byte transaction will be waiting for some days.

Some wallets suggest a fee for you based on the priority (low or high), but those algorithm usually overestimate fees. The best is to look at the mempool in the websites suggested above and see what fee will get a confirmation.

If you are not in a hurry, dont pay a fee for the next block.

[fiulpro]

At the same time you should remember the fact that you do have :
1. SegWit
2. Lightning network
In these cases the fees are honestly lower as compared to the whole thing. You can yourself choose your fee. Which does mean that you can increase or decrease your transaction fee. You can also get a guide though the wallet software. Then you will be able to pay according to your transaction : you can make this urgent or even wait for few days. Therefore it's not always a rock solid game here. You can get what you pay for. It's always better to use wallets like samourai and you can also couple your transactions with your friends and people you know. This would decrease the transaction to a considerable amount . Lightning network is not very safe it still needs a lot of updates and therefore I would recommend using the segWit address when you make a transaction or submit your address to someone. Would help you in the long run.

[Hamphser]

Hello,
I'm sorry if somebody has already answered this before, but I don't have a whole lot of experience in the cryptocurrency field and was wondering about network fees. More specifically, how are the standard network fees (the ones that a wallet or exchange gives as presets) determined? They shift fairly consistently, but are they based on anything other than the average Bitcoin transaction's fees? If so, what is preventing somebody with a large amount of money in Bitcoin assets from sending lots of cheap transactions with high fees, making the overall network slower? I feel like this is where my logic is very flawed, so if somebody could explain what's wrong in the above few sentences that would be very appreciated.

Depends on how the community been setting up their fees because one thing is for sure to happen is that miners will definitely prioritizing to those who had been paying up more with the fees

and if someone or you dont tend to make out your transaction get stucked nor getting too long confirmation then you would normally be putting up higher fees or the current priority fee and same

goes to other people as well until it do bloated out gradually which would really be resulting into high fees but somehow when the network turns out not to be bloated or high in traffic
then these fee amounts do normalizes.

[wxa7115]

Hello,
I'm sorry if somebody has already answered this before, but I don't have a whole lot of experience in the cryptocurrency field and was wondering about network fees. More specifically, how are the standard network fees (the ones that a wallet or exchange gives as presets) determined? They shift fairly consistently, but are they based on anything other than the average Bitcoin transaction's fees? If so, what is preventing somebody with a large amount of money in Bitcoin assets from sending lots of cheap transactions with high fees, making the overall network slower? I feel like this is where my logic is very flawed, so if somebody could explain what's wrong in the above few sentences that would be very appreciated.

But the example that you give does not make a lot of sense, even if a person tried to slow down the network and send all of those spam transactions so they get confirmed instead of real transactions the amount of bitcoin that he has will go down with each iteration making the exercise useless, he could be able to slow down the network for a while but then everything will return to normal so on the long term it makes no real difference at all.

I find the fees estimated in wallet providers are off most of the time so it is a better idea to calculate your own fees by hand, you can use any of the websites that have been shared here to know what it is the best possible fee you need to send in order to get a confirmation in the desired time.

[tabas]

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h
That website can give you an outlook how many transactions are stuck and how much pending fee is there. At the bottom it shows the size of the mempool. That will give you a hint why the fees are changing and that was already explained above if it's congested then you'll have to pay a higher fee. If the wallet you have allows you to set fees for faster transaction, you can always have that option to avoid being pending by the network.

[ReiMomo]

All information was detailed above and I guess you have easily studied it and determine the fees of bitcoin, once it is required transaction fee from the network, it accurately arrives with ion an hour but beyond that, your transaction will be confirmed for several days, and well I guess it turned out frustrating.

I suggest having a transaction every weekend because I have observed that it has a low fee, it seems like Sunday morning, and do check the site given above if you have a plan to have a transaction using bitcoin.

[goaldigger]

More sites for fee estimation
https://mempool.space/
https://mempool.observer/

To learn more about bitcoin transaction fee:
Transactions (Compilation for newbies)
Minimizing bitcoin transaction fee

Everything is here and honestly, I’ve also tried to understand this one but I’m not into numbers that much so I have to stop knowing it.

It’s good to know the basic indication that the fess will go up, always look for the traffic in the market because if there’s a huge demand on the platform like ETH for example, you can see the fees are also rising without making any computations.

[fillippone]

Network fees are the result of a free market: the fees are the price to have your transaction included in the blockchain.
So the fees are basically the price of the space in the block, and this price is entirely determined by demand and supply. Given the fact the supply is almost constant, the space in the block is roughly 1MG every 10 minutes, the driving force is essentially the demand for transactions: the more people want to get inside the block, the higher the fees.

Once you have understood this, the next logical step is: how MUCH I should bay to get my transaction in the block? Well, the website the other users suggested to you, all pretty well can guide you through that process.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

Bitcoin fee is also determined by network traffic. Fees tend to increase If network traffic is high/congested. If network isn't congested, fee remains low. Certain Wallet providers usually recommend fee higher than normal network fee to increase transaction speed.

In a way, you can think of network fee as a bribe to prioritize your transaction out of the other million transactions out there, and hopefully we can solve this problem of high fees for transaction as they are really bad for small transactions. There isn't a lot that I can say with OP as most of the replies already did the job.

[casperBGD]

Bitcoin fee is also determined by network traffic. Fees tend to increase If network traffic is high/congested. If network isn't congested, fee remains low. Certain Wallet providers usually recommend fee higher than normal network fee to increase transaction speed.

In a way, you can think of network fee as a bribe to prioritize your transaction out of the other million transactions out there, and hopefully we can solve this problem of high fees for transaction as they are really bad for small transactions. There isn't a lot that I can say with OP as most of the replies already did the job.

would not call it bribe, it is a regular fee for speed-up your transaction
someone that want to put transaction for a few USD is not willing to pay high transaction fees, but that is a way to fight spam, and optimize network performance

if you want to send some money, and you are willing to pay enough fee, you can do that in a matter of real-time, there is no similar cross-border transaction system, and that have price attached with it

[joniboini]

If so, what is preventing somebody with a large amount of money in Bitcoin assets from sending lots of cheap transactions with high fees, making the overall network slower?

They'll lose a lot of money doing that. There is a mechanism in place to discourage users or attackers to make lots of transactions with high-fees, so that seems unlikely to happen. The chance that fees are rising because more people use the network is probably higher than whales spending $1 with a $10 fee every day.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

In a way, you can think of network fee as a bribe to prioritize your transaction out of the other million transactions out there, and hopefully we can solve this problem of high fees for transaction as they are really bad for small transactions. There isn't a lot that I can say with OP as most of the replies already did the job.

would not call it bribe, it is a regular fee for speed-up your transaction
someone that want to put transaction for a few USD is not willing to pay high transaction fees, but that is a way to fight spam, and optimize network performance

if you want to send some money, and you are willing to pay enough fee, you can do that in a matter of real-time, there is no similar cross-border transaction system, and that have price attached with it

Isn't that how bribe works? That is why I said it in a way it resembles bribe because it speeds up transactions which is the same as bribe where you have to get this document this moment but the only way to get it fast is to slide some money to butter up the transaction. There are some similar system although they are really different at first glance, take Amazon Prime as an example, you need to have this status so your items are more prioritized.

[fillippone]

If so, what is preventing somebody with a large amount of money in Bitcoin assets from sending lots of cheap transactions with high fees, making the overall network slower?

They'll lose a lot of money doing that. There is a mechanism in place to discourage users or attackers to make lots of transactions with high-fees, so that seems unlikely to happen. The chance that fees are rising because more people use the network is probably higher than whales spending $1 with a $10 fee every day.

There is nothing wrong in that activity.
You can spam the network as long as you can afford the fees to do so. Eventually miners will thank you, other users might end up paying more fees for a limited period of time. But in the end it is the market deciding what it is spam, and not a central authority. If you want to attack the network you have to put funds at risk. This is the difference in approach with a PoS network or some other “fee/less network” (Tangle?) where you can spam without any cost.
I think it is a good compromise.

[wiss19]

I'm sorry if somebody has already answered this before, but I don't have a whole lot of experience in the cryptocurrency field and was wondering about network fees.

Consider transaction fees as the money you pay to the miners to include your transaction in the block they mine next. The higher the offer the better chances you have them accepting the transaction which gets you confirmation on your transaction faster.

There are some guides other users already shared, I would also share a link where you can see the unconfirmed BTC transactions which give you an idea of how congested the network is right now.

Check unconfirmed transactions - https://www.blockchain.com/btc/unconfirmed-transactions

Evaluate the best fees for your transaction - https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

More specifically, how are the standard network fees (the ones that a wallet or exchange gives as presets) determined? They shift fairly consistently, but are they based on anything other than the average Bitcoin transaction's fees? If so, what is preventing somebody with a large amount of money in Bitcoin assets from sending lots of cheap transactions with high fees, making the overall network slower? I feel like this is where my logic is very flawed, so if somebody could explain what's wrong in the above few sentences that would be very appreciated.

Yes, one can send a million transactions over the network and make it slower I guess but that would be temporary and the cost would be high.

There is no reason for someone to do it either because one can pay an accelerator if the network is too busy and they are in hurry to get the transaction confirmed. There are free and paid both types of accelerators.

I don't use it many times but this is the one I use - https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator?lang=en_US

[SquallLeonhart]

Everyone talked about how it is calculated, nobody talked about how it was determined. The fact is that, it is determined by how many people have transactions and what they are willing to pay for it to go urgently. So let's say the amount is 2 dollars on a blockchain, and there are 100 new people who want it urgently and they are willing to pay 3 dollars, it goes to 3 dollars, new 100 people come in and see this and they want urgently as well so they pay 4 and so forth, basically it is supply and demand.

Miners help people move their money around, and automatically pick the highest paying ones, and since there are too many transactions nowadays due to the hype, everyone pays more and more to get it urgently and that is why it is quite expensive, that is what happened to bitcoin, that's what happened to ethereum as well, thankfully BNB is still as cheap as ever.