Transaction fees have fallen below 0.7% of miner revenue, close to the lowest level in ten years. Looking at that number alone, it is normal to worry about network security. But there are several layers between "low fee share" and "an insecure network."
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Why Is the Fee Share So Low?
In 2026, miners' daily transaction fee income at one point was only 2.443 BTC, while the block subsidy was 450 BTC, making the fee share about 0.54%. But low fees are not entirely bad news. At least two reasons are worth noting.
Reason 1: Technology upgrades make transactions use less space
The Runes protocol replaced the old data storage method, shrinking the on-chain space used per transaction from 4MB to about 80 bytes. In March 2026, Runes transactions accounted for 70% of all network transactions, but they did not cause any fee spike. At the same time, large institutions are increasingly using "batch processing," where one on-chain transaction packs hundreds of user operations. The result is record transaction numbers without rising fees.
Reason 2: Fees and subsidies play different roles
Bitcoin core developer Pierre Rochard explained this clearly: new block issuance is used to "bootstrap" the network, while transaction fees are what pay for "transaction finality." Cutting issuance in half does not directly weaken "transaction finality" because these are two different systems.
Low Fees Do Not Mean a Weaker Network
Look at it from two angles.
Fidelity Digital Assets research: In past halving cycles, miner income did not collapse. Instead, it grew sharply, from an average of about $26,000 per day in the first halving cycle to more than $40.2 million per day now. The reason is that the Bitcoin price increase has far outweighed the reduction in block subsidies.
Lower hash rate does not equal security collapse: In 2026, hash rate fell about 33% from its peak of 1.3 ZH/s. But that also means high-cost, inefficient mining machines are being eliminated. It is not that nobody is maintaining the network. It is that the weakest participants are being shaken out first.
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The Real Risk Line to Watch
The fee share near the historical low of 0.5%-0.7% does show that on-chain activity is not very high. But as Rochard said: fees are low because there is no censorship pressure, no urgent need to keep transactions from being excluded, and no one needs to "bid" to get a transaction included. That actually shows the network is running smoothly.
But there is one number worth watching: the miner shutdown price. In 2026, the average mining cost was about $78,254, roughly 23% higher than the spot price. If a large number of miners stay at a loss for a long time and have no alternative income, that is the real warning signal, and it is more direct than a "low fee share."
How you can check it yourself: Open Glassnode or Checkonchain and look at two indicators: changes in miners' net holdings, to see whether they are continuously selling large amounts, and Hashprice, to see whether it is staying above about $35-40 per PH/s per day. As long as miners are not being forced to dump large amounts and Hashprice is not persistently breaking below historical lows, the network's "security budget" is still operating within a normal range.
