What happens to miners if Monero transaction fees stay low?

If Monero transaction fees stay low, you can still earn mining rewards because miners receive newly created XMR as well as fees. Monero’s permanent “tail emission” keeps that base reward in place, but it does not guarantee that your mining income will cover your costs.

Low fees leave the base reward intact

When a miner finds a valid block—a new batch of transactions added to Monero’s shared record—they receive two things:

• The block subsidy: newly created XMR.
• Transaction fees: XMR paid by people sending transactions.

Since around June 2022, Monero has used tail emission, a continuing subsidy of 0.6 XMR per block, before any applicable oversized-block penalty. Blocks arrive roughly every two minutes, so this creates about 432 XMR a day across the whole network.

Low fees do not switch off that subsidy. If fees contribute very little, miners mostly compete for the newly created XMR instead.

That matters because Monero does not have a scheduled date when new coin rewards disappear and miners must rely entirely on fees.

Your profit still depends on your costs

A continuing reward is not the same as continuing profit. If fees stay low, you have less extra income on top of the subsidy than you would during periods of higher fee revenue.

Your own result depends on:

• Your share of mining power: how much work your device does compared with all other miners.
• Electricity and equipment costs: including cooling and wear.
• XMR’s market price: which affects what your reward can buy.
• Pool or service charges: amounts taken by anyone helping you mine.

A mining pool combines miners’ work and shares rewards. It can make your payments more regular, but it cannot create extra revenue to make up for low fees.

For browser mining, check what your service actually mines and how it calculates payouts. Browser limits and service charges can matter much more to your result than a small change in Monero fees. Use live figures and measured power use rather than trusting promised earnings.

Some miners may leave, helping those who remain

If total mining income is too low, miners with expensive electricity or inefficient equipment may stop.

Monero adjusts mining difficulty, the amount of work needed to find a block on average, every block. If mining power drops, difficulty adjusts downward over time to bring block timing back toward two minutes.

If you keep mining while others leave, your unchanged equipment represents a larger share of the remaining mining power. That can increase your expected XMR earnings after difficulty adjusts.

Still, this is not a guaranteed rescue. A falling XMR price or rising electricity bill can outweigh that improvement.

Low fees do not automatically mean weak security

Mining helps protect Monero by making it costly to rewrite its transaction history. Less total miner revenue can support less mining power, all else being equal.

But fees alone do not determine security. Tail emission provides an ongoing reward even when fee revenue is small. The reward’s market value, miners’ costs, and how widely mining power is spread also matter.

Low fees therefore create a trade-off: sending XMR stays affordable, while miners receive less fee income than they otherwise might.

The bottom line

If Monero fees stay low, mining continues with tail emission as its main reward source. You are not forced out simply because fees are small—but you still need to check whether your share of rewards covers your real costs.