What are miner fees and does Coinbase pay them?

To ensure that transactions are processed on cryptocurrency networks, outgoing transactions to external cryptocurrency addresses typically incur a "mining" or "network" fee. This fee is paid to cryptocurrency miners, which are the systems that process the transactions and secure the respective network. Coinbase incurs and pays these fees directly. Accordingly, Coinbase will charge a fee based on our estimate of the network transaction fees for a stand-alone wallet-to-wallet send. For more information, see our pricing and fees disclosure page. All fees we charge will be disclosed at the time of your transaction. Coinbase does not charge network fees for cryptocurrency transfers from one Coinbase wallet to another.

As crypto begins to gain broader adoption in applications like DeFi, payments, and other projects, networks are now busier which leads to longer wait times and higher fees as users compete to get their transactions confirmed faster.