AI-generated analysisPublished automatically and not human-verified. Validated context appears in community notes below.
← Watch feed
Low 41 Bitcoin

[policy] lower default minrelaytxfee and incrementalrelayfee to 100sat/kvB

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by glozow

73/100 · Adequate
[policy] lower default minrelaytxfee and incrementalrelayfee to 100sat/kvB

Let's say an attacker wants to use/exhaust the network's bandwidth, and
has the choice between renting resources from a commercial provider and
getting the network to "spam" itself it by sending unconfirmed
transactions. We'd like the latter to be more expensive than the former.

The bandwidth for relaying a transaction across the network is roughly
its serialized size (plus relay overhead) x number of nodes. A 1000vB
transaction is 1000-4000B serialized. With 100k nodes, that's 0.1-0.4GB
If the going rate for commercial services is 10c/GB, that's like 1-4c per kvB
of transaction data, so a 1000vB transaction should pay at least $0.04.

At a price of 120k USD/BTC, 100sat is about $0.12. This price allows us
to tolerate a large decrease in the conversion rate or increase in the
number of nodes.
✓ Specific, descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This commit lowers Bitcoin Core's default minimum relay fee and replacement fee from 1000 satoshis per kilovbyte to 100 satoshis per kilovbyte. The stated goal is to make it cheaper for legitimate transactions to propagate while still keeping spam-based bandwidth attacks more expensive than renting commercial bandwidth. It is a deliberate policy change, not a code vulnerability, but it changes the economics of transaction relay and mempool replacement across the network.

Recommended action

Treat as a notable policy change rather than a vulnerability. Node operators and downstream users should review whether the lower default minrelaytxfee and incrementalrelayfee align with their mempool DoS tolerance. Wallet and service authors should verify fee estimation and bumpfee behavior under the new defaults. No emergency patch is required.

Security signals we found

01

Default fee policy constants changed by 10x

02

Commit message describes attacker bandwidth-exhaustion threat model

03

Affects mempool admission and RBF anti-DoS fee requirements

04

May alter network-wide relay behavior if widely adopted

05

No cryptographic, consensus, or memory-safety code modified

Risk score

Why this scored 41/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 8/30
Exploitability 7/25
Stealth signal 5/15
Affected reach 10/15
Confidence 7/10
Evidence quality 4/5
Human-validated context

Community notes

Notes can correct, qualify, or add evidence to the AI analysis. Every note shown here has been validated by a human moderator.

No validated notes yet.

The AI analysis stands alone for now. Submit a note if you can add evidence or important context.