Block reward

The block reward is what a miner or validator earns for producing a new block. On Bitcoin it has two parts: the block subsidy, which is newly created bitcoin, and the transaction fees paid by every transaction included in the block.

Bitcoin's subsidy started at 50 BTC per block in 2009 and halves every 210,000 blocks. Since the April 2024 halving it has been 3.125 BTC per block. Because the subsidy keeps shrinking, transaction fees are expected to become miners' main income over the coming decades, and after roughly 2140 they will be the only income.

On proof-of-stake networks such as Ethereum, validators receive newly issued ETH for proposing and attesting to blocks, plus priority fees (tips) from users. On Ethereum, the base part of each transaction fee is burned rather than paid to validators. Reward rates on proof-of-stake chains depend on how much of the coin is staked.