Michael Sullivan

HIGHEST FEE GETS IN FIRST BLOCK FORGE is a BTC mainnet desk that turns mempool → block into one loop: waiting txs drop into a 216-slot template, the template gets hashed, then the block slides onto the chain most people only see the price candle. this one shows the forge. who gets into the next block, what sat/vB it costs, and how much the miner actually takes home the idea: the mempool is the waiting room. the template is the packing list. the hash search is the lottery. tip-1 tip-2 tip-3 are just the last blocks that already left the forge i ran one 15s time-lapse of forge 01. 5 seconds on screen ≈ 10 minutes on mainnet. fill climbs 0 → 100%. fee for next block falls as the template packs. when the nonce hits, the cube locks and slides onto the rail ▹ what runs under the hood 1. MEMPOOL: ~50k+ txs waiting. pink = high fee · orange = mid · purple = low. they don't all get in 2. TEMPLATE: 216 slots · 6 layers. txs drop in by fee. highest fee packs first until the block is full 3. FEE MARKET: live histogram of who made it vs who is still waiting. next / 3 / 6 block estimates sit next to it 4. HASH SEARCH: SHA-256d against the target. hashrate on the board · nonce ticking until one hits 5. CHAIN: tip-1 tip-2 tip-3 with hashes, ~4k txs each, ~3.125 BTC reward. the found block slides onto the rail 6. MINER REWARD: subsidy + fees. ~3.1–3.3 BTC to the miner this loop. next halvings cuts the subsidy to 1.5625 around 2028 MEMPOOL → TEMPLATE → HASH → CHAIN alone a fee chart is a guess. alone a block explorer is after the fact. together you watch the next block get forged before it lands bookmark this before you pay 80 sat/vB into a template that was already full edge is open until everyone else wakes up