Miners process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Bitcoin is a distributed ledger for transfer and store of value (a blockchain). Bitcoin was founded by a pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and launched in 2009.

BTC holders own and govern the protocol. They currently do not take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue).

github

block explorer

Blockchains (L1)

Bitcoin

# Bitcoin Average fees per user (AFPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average Fees Per User (AFPU) measures the average amount of transaction fees paid per daily active user on the Bitcoin network, expressed in USD. This metric answers the business question: "How much revenue (in fees) does the Bitcoin network generate per active user?" The calculation divides total daily fees in USD by the number of unique daily active users, providing insight into the economic value generated per user.

## 2. Data sources

The AFPU calculation relies on several key data sources:
- **Bitcoin transaction data**: Complete Bitcoin blockchain transaction records containing input and output information, transaction hashes, and timestamps
- **Bitcoin block data**: Bitcoin blockchain block records containing fee amounts in satoshis, block timestamps, and block subsidies
- **Token price feeds**: End-of-day BTC/USD price data from Chainlink price feeds (from December 10, 2019 onward) and CoinGecko historical market data (for earlier periods)
- **Transaction input/output mappings**: Bitcoin transaction input and output data used to resolve which addresses initiated transactions

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: User identification and counting
- **Purpose**: Identifies unique daily active users on the Bitcoin network by resolving transaction inputs to originating addresses
- **Logic**: The system first creates a lookup table by extracting all transaction outputs and their associated addresses from Bitcoin transaction data. Then, for each transaction input, it traces back to the previous transaction output to determine the originating address. Users are identified as addresses that initiated transactions (sent Bitcoin) on a given day. The process handles both historical data (pre-2019) and recent data separately for processing efficiency. Daily active users are aggregated using HyperLogLog (HLL) probabilistic data structure for efficient distinct counting across different dimensions
- **Key fields**: User addresses are extracted from transaction outputs (`scriptPubKey.address`), transaction hashes (`txid`), output indices (`vout`), and daily timestamps

### Component B: Fee calculation and USD conversion
- **Purpose**: Calculates total daily transaction fees in USD for the Bitcoin network
- **Logic**: Transaction fees are extracted from Bitcoin block data, where the `total_fee` field contains fee amounts in satoshis. These amounts are converted to BTC by dividing by 10^8 (since 1 BTC = 100,000,000 satoshis). The BTC amounts are then converted to USD using end-of-day price data. For dates from December 10, 2019 onward, Chainlink price feeds provide BTC/USD prices. For earlier historical dates, CoinGecko market data is used. Daily fees are calculated by summing all fee amounts multiplied by the corresponding daily BTC price
- **Key fields**: Block timestamps, `total_fee_amount` (converted from satoshis), and daily BTC/USD `price` data

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The two components are combined using a macro-based calculation that divides daily fees (in USD) by daily active users. Both metrics are aggregated to the same daily time boundary to ensure proper alignment
- **Currency conversion**: BTC fees are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds, with Chainlink data preferred for recent periods and CoinGecko for historical data
- **Time aggregation**: All data is aggregated to daily boundaries using day-truncated timestamps to ensure consistent time alignment between fees and user counts
- **Final calculation**: AFPU is computed as the quotient of total daily fees in USD divided by the count of unique daily active users, expressed as: AFPU = (Sum of daily transaction fees in USD) / (Count of unique daily active users)

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

BitcoinBTC

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Average fees per user (AFPU)

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