Imagine you're a parent who wants to send a gift to your child but don't have enough money. Your generous child, who has some savings, decides to cover the remaining cost for the gift. This scenario is similar to how Child Pays for Parent (CPFP) works in Bitcoin.

In Bitcoin, transactions need to be confirmed by miners to be considered valid. Miners are like record keepers who validate and add transactions to the blockchain, Bitcoin's public ledger. To incentivize miners to process transactions, users pay fees. However, sometimes transactions with low fees get stuck in a queue, waiting for miners to pick them up.

CPFP is a technique to accelerate the confirmation of these stuck transactions. It works by creating a new transaction, called the child, that spends an output from the stuck transaction, called the parent. The child transaction has a higher fee, making it more attractive for miners to process. Since the child transaction can't be confirmed without the parent, miners are indirectly incentivized to confirm both transactions together.

Think of it as the child paying for the parent's transaction, expediting the process for both. CPFP is a way for users to take control of their transactions and avoid frustration when their transfers take longer than expected. h/t nostr:npub18kpw3akvdsyk239lx0jgwksr74sq4nlha3r8u9g2rnrhztfpfhysy469c4