Coinbase Transaction

A coinbase transaction is the very first transaction in every block. It is created by the miner who found the block and serves as the mechanism for issuing the block reward plus all transaction fees from that block.

This is not related to the Coinbase exchange — the term predates the company.

Key properties

• No sender — unlike regular transactions, a coinbase transaction has no input. New coins are created by the protocol.
• Block reward — includes the fixed subsidy (currently 3.125 BTC per block after the 2024 halving)
• Transaction fees — also includes the sum of all fees paid by transactions in that block
• Maturity lock — coinbase outputs cannot be spent until 100 more blocks are confirmed (Bitcoin's "coinbase maturity" rule)

Relevance to pool mining

In a mining pool, the coinbase transaction pays the pool operator's address. The pool then distributes earnings to miners according to their contributed hashrate and its payout scheme (e.g., PPS+).

See also

• Block
• Block reward
• Halving
• Mining pool