With the introduction of ordinals to the Bitcoin protocol fees have skyrocketed.  They have been as high as $190 US and currently are averaging $7 per transaction.  For the last few years fees have hovered around $1 US.  The current fees are a 700% increase.

My question is who do these high fees benefit?

In a Bitcoin transaction you have the sender and receiver of Bitcoin. The sender is the party paying the fee and they are definitely not benefiting from the fee.  The receiver does not pay the fee nor do they receive the fee so they do not benefit either.

Most Bitcoin transactions also include a third party like an exchange or the organizations that hosts third party nodes if they are not self hosted. These third parties do not benefit from higher fees either.

The final participant in a transaction is the Bitcoin miner.  Bitcoin transaction fees are paid out to miners with the block rewards.  When the fees go up miners make more money so it is clear that miners benefit.

This month the miners rewards were cut in half due to the halving. At the same time fees skyrocketed due to increased volume as a result of the introduction of Runes.  I think you would have to conclude that ordinals which include Inscriptions and Runes were introduced to increase the transaction fees to offset the loss in revenue to the miners because of the halving that just occurred. It was no accident that Runes were  launched on the day of the halving.

There are a couple of key points to consider: First, If miners can change Bitcoin to increase the fees is Bitcoin really decentralized? Second, and most importantly, do these increased fees help bitcoin to be a better form of digital cash?