Protocol 13 introduces fee-bump transactions to the Stellar network, allowing users to increase transaction fees without requiring new signatures from all parties. This solves the problem of pre-signed transactions becoming unexecutable when network fees rise unexpectedly.
Fee-bump transactions are a new feature in Stellar Protocol 13 that enable flexible fee adjustment for transactions already signed by multiple parties. The article explains how pre-signed transactions could become stuck if minimum network fees increased after signing, and how fee-bump transactions solve this by allowing a separate account to pay a higher fee without requiring re-signing of the original transaction. The implementation uses a replace-by-fee mechanism requiring at least 10x higher fees to prevent denial-of-service attacks. The feature evolved from an original proposal by OrbitLens of stellar.expert, with the final design balancing strong guarantees against implementation complexity and security considerations.
