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Dust and Fees

Bitcoin Knots provides enhanced control over dust thresholds and fee-related policies.

What is Dust?

"Dust" refers to transaction outputs so small that the cost to spend them exceeds their value. These outputs are economically irrational and can bloat the UTXO set.

Dust Configuration

Static Dust Relay Fee

Set the fee rate used to calculate dust threshold:

bitcoin.conf
# Satoshis per 1000 bytes
dustrelayfee=3000

Dynamic Dust

Enable dynamic dust calculation based on current fee rates:

bitcoin.conf
dustdynamic=1

With dynamic dust enabled, the threshold adjusts based on mempool conditions.

Fee Policies

Minimum Relay Fee

Set the minimum fee rate for transaction relay:

bitcoin.conf
# Satoshis per 1000 virtual bytes
minrelaytxfee=1000

Incremental Relay Fee

Fee increment required for RBF replacements:

bitcoin.conf
incrementalrelayfee=1000

Confirmation Target Default

Set default confirmation target (Knots patch):

bitcoin.conf
# Default: 1 day (144 blocks)
# Knots uses 1-day default vs Core's 6-block default

Fee Estimation

Save Fee Estimates

Persist fee estimates across restarts:

bitcoin-cli savefeeestimates

Accept Stale Estimates

Allow using older fee estimates on mainnet:

bitcoin.conf
acceptstalefeeestimates=1

Fee Histogram

Knots includes fee histogram data in mempool info:

bitcoin-cli getmempoolinfo

Returns additional fee rate distribution data for better fee estimation.

See Also