What Is the Concept of ‘Rational Self-Interest’ for a Cryptocurrency Miner?

The concept of 'rational self-interest' for a cryptocurrency miner posits that the miner will always act in a way that maximizes their own profit. Since mining involves significant capital investment in hardware and ongoing operational costs (electricity), the rational miner will prioritize revenue generation.

This means their transaction selection strategy will be to include the highest fee-per-byte transactions to maximize the transaction fee component of the block reward. This individual, profit-driven behavior is what collectively secures the network and drives the fee market.