Bitcoin’s fee market has weakened since the 2024 halving and the decline of Ordinals and Runes demand.
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This has led to an unusual phase, raising questions about the fate of fees and their implications for the network’s economic security. Since the drop in non-monetary activity like Ordinals and Runes in late 2024, on-chain usage has fallen sharply.
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This has resulted in a growing number of blocks that clear at almost no cost to users, often averaging just 1 satoshi per virtual byte or less. For those looking to send bitcoin quickly and cheaply, this seems ideal. But the same cannot be said for miners, who rely on fees to supplement the block subsidy after the 2024 halving.
The collapse of fee pressure exposes a deeper vulnerability in Bitcoin’s long-term sustainability. Median daily fees have fallen more than 80% since April 2024.
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As of August 2025, nearly 15% of all blocks can be classified as “free blocks.” At the same time, almost half of the blocks in recent months have not reached maximum weight.
This reveals an unusually thin mempool and highlights the absence of competition for blockspace. The disappearance of fees can be traced to several structural changes. One is the dramatic surge and decline of OP_RETURN transactions.
They spiked during the peak of Runes adoption in 2024 and at times accounted for 40-60% of daily activity. Their retreat back to roughly 20% of transactions has released congestion, lowering overall fees. Yet OP_RETURN remains central to debate, especially as Bitcoin Core’s upcoming v30 release could allow larger and multiple OP_RETURN outputs per transaction.
Supporters argue that because these outputs are provably unspendable, they do not increase the burden on the UTXO set.
Bitcoin’s fee market dilemma
Critics, however, warn that they consume scarce blockspace that could otherwise be used for monetary transactions.
This has sparked concerns about spam and sustainability. Another factor behind weaker fees is the migration of activity away from Bitcoin’s base layer. Spot ETFs now hold around 1.3 million BTC, locking up supply that rarely moves on-chain and reducing transaction demand.
At the same time, speculative use cases such as NFTs and meme coins have shifted to faster and cheaper alternatives like Solana. Users find a smoother experience there compared to Bitcoin’s relatively constrained environment. This displacement means that transactions that once competed aggressively for inclusion in blocks are now occurring elsewhere, further undermining fee revenue for miners.
Beyond immediate fee pressures, analysts also examined the UTXO set to assess long-term security risks. They found that millions of coins remain in legacy formats such as P2PK and P2PKH. Some of these are inherently vulnerable to quantum attacks due to exposed public keys.
On the other hand, adoption of P2WPKH has grown to dominate unspent balances, while Taproot continues to gain traction for advanced use cases. For now, the lull offers a window of cheap transactions. But the long-term picture is murkier as a declining fee market poses serious questions to the network’s security.
Post-2024, miners are left with 3.125 BTC in block rewards. Miner incentives are increasingly exposed to fluctuations in organic demand. But as BTC activity shifts toward ETFs, custodial platforms, and faster alternative L1s, the core network risks becoming a “settlement layer without sufficient settlement activity.”
As reliance on off-chain “paper Bitcoin” grows and fees dry up, Bitcoin’s long-term security hinges on a level of usage that remains uncertain.
