Priority Fee
An optional extra fee per unit of gas paid to the block producer to encourage faster inclusion of a transaction.
Since the base fee is burned, the tip is the portion of an ordinary transaction fee that a block producer actually keeps, which is why it governs ordering when demand exceeds the space available. Wallets set a default tip and raise it when the pending pool is congested, and a transaction offering too little may sit unconfirmed until conditions ease or the user replaces it with a higher-fee version. Sophisticated participants combine tips with direct submission to block builders, so the public tip is not always the whole payment a producer receives. The tip affects when a transaction is included, not whether its contents are valid.
In practice
During periods of heavy demand, wallets raise the suggested tip so a transaction is selected ahead of others offering less for the same block space.
The common misunderstanding
A higher tip buys position in the queue, not a different outcome; it cannot make an invalid transaction succeed or undo one already included.