What Is “Replace-by-Fee” (RBF) and How Does It Affect Miners?

Replace-by-Fee (RBF) is a Bitcoin protocol feature allowing a sender to replace an unconfirmed transaction in the mempool with a new transaction that pays a higher fee. This is primarily used to expedite confirmation if the original fee was too low during network congestion.

For miners, RBF is economically beneficial as it directly increases the total transaction fees they can earn by prioritizing the more lucrative replacement transaction. It creates a competitive market for block space, maximizing miner revenue.