After the 2024 halving, Bitcoin (BTC) miners have reached a new revenue milestone through transaction validation.

These miners are earning a lot of money as Bitcoin fees rise, which is generating conversation about the network's potential future dynamics.

After the most recent halving of Bitcoin on April 20, 2024, miner earnings reached a record high of $106.7 million, of which 75.444% came from network transaction fees.

This demonstrates a significant change in miner compensation plans following the halving.

Increased income despite lower block rewards

April 20, 2024 saw the most recent halving, which significantly decreased the block reward from 6.25 Bitcoin to 3.125 Bitcoin. The purpose of this calculated move is to reduce the rate of growth of the 21 million coin maximum supply of Bitcoin.

Even with the decline in block rewards, miners experienced a significant boost in total block revenue, which climbed to 21.74 BTC.

The primary driver behind this increase was a spike in transaction fees, which accounted for nearly 18 BTC of the average block revenue, according to data from OKLink.

Prominent mining pools, including Foundry, Antpool, Viabtc, Poolin, and F2pool, have played essential roles in this financial windfall, particularly in securing blocks that carried hefty transaction fees.

These fees saw a dramatic increase to $240 per transaction with the introduction of the Runes protocol, though they have since adjusted to a range of $35 to $75.

This period also witnessed a record level of on-chain activity, with the number of transactions on the Bitcoin network reaching a new high of 991,029,144 transactions in a single week.

This uptick in activity explains the corresponding increases in miner revenue and hashrate.

As the Runes token protocol kicked off with the 2024 halving, it sparked intense competition for block space, with participants striving to be the first to generate tokens

The evolving landscape of Bitcoin mining

As the cryptocurrency sector adjusts to these new economic conditions, the impacts on network security, miner profitability, and Bitcoin fees will become clearer over time.

The rising share of transaction fees in total block revenue is already spurring the development of second-layer solutions like the Lightning Network.

This innovation aims to decrease costs and improve transaction speeds on the blockchain, addressing some of the scalability issues faced by the network as it continues to grow.