Every Solana transaction includes two distinct fee components: the base fee and the optional priority fee. Understanding how they differ — in purpose, calculation, and economic impact — is essential for anyone building on or transacting with the Solana network.

‍

Base fee: per-signature, 50% burned / 50% to the validator. Priority fee: per compute unit, 100% to the validator. Both are charged whether the transaction succeeds or fails.

‍

The Base Fee

The base fee on Solana is currently fixed at 5,000 lamports per signature. It compensates validators for the cryptographic work of verifying Ed25519, Secp256k1, and Secp256r1 signatures. A transaction with two signers would incur a base fee of 10,000 lamports.

‍

The base fee distribution follows a 50/50 split: half is permanently burned (removed from circulating supply), and half goes to the block-producing validator. This deflationary mechanism helps offset SOL inflation over time.

‍

The Priority Fee

The priority fee is entirely optional and fully variable. It is calculated as: ceil(compute_unit_price × compute_unit_limit / 1,000,000) lamports. Unlike the base fee, the entire priority fee goes directly to the block-producing validator — none is burned. This creates a direct financial incentive for validators to prefer transactions with higher priority fees during block construction.

‍

How the Scheduler Uses Fees

Solana's transaction scheduler ranks transactions using a priority score calculated as: reward / cost, where reward is the validator's fee income (priority fee + non-burned portion of base fee) and cost is the estimated compute cost of the transaction. Transactions with a higher reward-to-cost ratio are dequeued first for execution.

‍

Economic Impact: Burn vs. Validator Revenue

The burning of 50% of base fees introduces a mild deflationary pressure on SOL supply. Priority fees, by contrast, are pure validator revenue — they incentivize block producers to include fee-bearing transactions and, by extension, encourage honest network participation. As Solana usage grows and priority fee revenue increases, validators derive an increasing share of their income from user transactions rather than protocol inflation.

‍

Both Fees Are Charged on Failure

An important distinction from some other blockchains: on Solana, both the base fee and priority fee are charged regardless of whether the transaction succeeds or fails. The fee payer account is debited before execution begins. This deters spam — attackers cannot flood the network with failing transactions at no cost.