What is Fee rate (sat/vB)?
What a transaction pays per virtual byte of the space it occupies. Miners prioritise by fee rate, not by total fee.
A transaction paying a large total fee but occupying a lot of space can be less attractive to a miner than a small one paying less in absolute terms. What matters is revenue per unit of scarce block space.
A typical single-input, two-output native SegWit spend is around 141 virtual bytes, which is the reference size our fee estimator uses to translate a rate into a real cost.
Related terms
Mempool
The set of valid transactions a node has seen but that are not yet in a block — the queue competing for block…
Transactions & feesVirtual byte (vB)
The unit transaction size is measured in for fee purposes, equal to four weight units, introduced so SegWit…
NetworkSegWit
A 2017 soft fork that moved signature data into a separate witness structure, fixing transaction malleability…
Transactions & feesRBF (replace-by-fee)
A signalling mechanism that lets an unconfirmed transaction be replaced by a version paying a higher fee.
This definition is part of the Bitcoin Logical glossary. For the fuller explanation, start with Learn, or see the live numbers on The Bitcoin Signal.