Crypto glossary
Priority fee (tip)
A priority fee, or tip, is the extra amount per unit of gas paid on top of the base fee to reward the block proposer and get a transaction included sooner.
Under EIP-1559, an Ethereum transaction specifies two numbers: a maximum fee per gas and a maximum priority fee per gas. The base fee is burned, and the priority fee, commonly called the tip, goes to the validator that proposes the block, or in practice to the block builder working for it. Builders sort pending transactions largely by the tip they pay, so a higher tip usually means faster inclusion when blocks are full.
In quiet periods a tip of a fraction of a gwei is enough, and wallets set it automatically. It becomes decisive in races: liquidations, token launches and arbitrage, where bots outbid each other on priority fees. Solana uses a similar idea, letting users pay a priority fee per compute unit to be scheduled ahead of others, and most EVM layer 2 networks expose the same field.
A high tip does not guarantee inclusion if the maximum fee is set below the current base fee. Tips also do not protect against front-running; they can even signal value to MEV searchers watching the public mempool.
Example
A trader racing to close a position before liquidation raises the priority fee in the wallet's advanced settings so builders put the transaction at the top of the next block.