Microtransaction
payments · economics
A payment small enough that fees, minimum-output rules, and interaction overhead materially affect whether it is practical.
- Also known as
- micropayment
1.general
A microtransaction or micropayment is a low-value transfer, commonly proposed for tips, pay-per-use services, games, content, machine payments, or metered APIs. There is no universal value threshold; the useful comparison is the payment's value against its total processing and user-interaction cost.
2.designs
Micropayments can settle directly on-chain, be batched, move through payment channels or other Layer-2 systems, or use a custodial internal ledger. Each design changes fees, confirmation assumptions, liquidity needs, privacy, custody, availability, and dispute handling.
3.constraints
On-chain viability depends on transaction size, fee policy, blockspace demand, minimum-output rules, and the cost of creating and later spending UTXOs. A technically cheap transfer can still be impractical if wallet friction, exchange minimums, volatility, accounting, or regulatory obligations exceed the payment value.
Related terms
Transaction Fee
→The network cost of processing a transaction, separate from the amount sent to the recipient.
blockchain · technical · basics
Fee Rate
→Transaction fee per unit of size: commonly sat/vB for Bitcoin or sat/byte for Bitcoin Cash. It helps explain miner selection, not a guaranteed wait.
blockchain · economics
Payment Channel
→A protocol that locks funds on-chain while participants exchange authorized balance updates off-chain before final settlement.
payments · layer-2 · scaling
Dust
→Dust is a tiny coin or token balance that is uneconomical to spend because fees or policy rules outweigh its value.
concept · blockchain · cryptocurrency · security
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