Free transactions: What's the catch?

[Abiky]

I've seen some cryptocurrencies which don't charge a fee per transaction. This economic model makes "De-Fi" fairer and equitable as anyone can participate freely without the need to worry about ever-rising transaction costs. Coins like EOS, NANO, IOTA, and even TRON provide free transactions for the benefit of all.

But as I've learned with anything, there's always a catch. As it's said in the real world, there's no such thing as "free lunch". How are miners/validators incentivized in the long run? Will they be satisfied to earn only from the block reward without the added bonus of earning from TX fees (like it's the case with Bitcoin)? Or will this economic model fail in the long run? I fail to see how this could work since TX fees are meant to incentivize miners and prevent spam on the Blockchain. Am I missing something here? Some clear guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[blockman]

I think that will be the same as bitcoin when it started, they can have free transactions as much as they want but if the transactions grew from the numbers that they aren't expecting.
There could be some fix and validators for those coins for each transaction might get some incentives. But the model? that will depend on the developers of it.

[btcsmlcmnr]

Free is misinformation. Fees are there but look like free because too low in $.

A shit coin with value @$0.0001 and cost of transaction fee is 1 to few coins will be converted to almost $0. It is free cost in USD.

I use some shit coins to move my small chunks if possible but with large money, I always use Bitcoin or Litecoin. Ethereum is good but its fee is crazy high.

Free lunches as hooks to steal money from investors. It can be true.

[amishmanish]

The block validators in most of these chains are generally OG participants with huge shares of pre-mines allotted to them. Sometimes they are run by the promoter themselves, as in the case of BSC. The ultimate motive is to create FOMO by getting more and more people onboard in the name of free transactions.

Once enough people are onboard and liquidity on the exchanges grow, you will see these huge sell-offs from old wallets and the TG plus Discord admins will start talking about "We cannot control what whales do, We have built the product, the market decides".

These projects are the best possible cash cow that any solidity developer can milk with good enough UI skills and with the right choice of words. You can be anonymous and keep milking the community with zero repercussions.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Free is misinformation. Fees are there but look like free because too low in $.

Thats right. But I am impress with the tron blockchain cause I tried to withdraw from Binance USDT before and literally no fee or payment that has been asked from clients. Even transaction with Tron and binance smart chain are low but this is due to the fact that their network can handle better than ethereum network congestion.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

If a chain is more scalable, faster, cheaper ... you should know that the easiest way to achive this is to make it less decentralized. BSC, for instance has only 21 validators.

How are miners/validators incentivized in the long run?

If you have high enough block rewards you dont need to take fees. Fees are hidden into high inflation.

Free is misinformation. Fees are there but look like free because too low in $.

Thats right. But I am impress with the tron blockchain cause I tried to withdraw from Binance USDT before and literally no fee or payment that has been asked from clients. Even transaction with Tron and binance smart chain are low but this is due to the fact that their network can handle better than ethereum network congestion.

I use tron a lot (using trust wallet) and its not free. Its like 0.3-0.6$ per transaction. And here comes the biggest question. How majority of crypto exchanges manage to do it for free not charging even a small fee for node maintenance. I assume that Justin Sun had to do a decent deal with them. Something like - "we will mine your transaction for free + we will pay you for node maintenance just don't charge your users with fees. This will be expensive but pays out on long run by getting more and more tron lovers."

[(o)(o)ilikeboobs(o)(o)]

It's just that the transaction costs on the above blockchains are low in value and at a level that people think is close to zero. Beneficiaries are nodes that confirm transactions.
However, the point I don't like about the blockchains above is that the transaction cost is fixed (based on the coin unit, for example, EOS is 0.1) and it cannot decrease or stabilize when the value of that cryptocurrency. increase.

[plr]

I've seen some cryptocurrencies which don't charge a fee per transaction. This economic model makes "De-Fi" fairer and equitable as anyone can participate freely without the need to worry about ever-rising transaction costs. Coins like EOS, NANO, IOTA, and even TRON provide free transactions for the benefit of all.

Sending on Tron will incur a fee, yet it's too small that it will not have an impact on the value of your coin but it's not zero-fee even Nano will incur a fee, Tron is a token that should be relevant today because of the fees from other coins, which is very expensive and took a lot of time to confirm and yet the price is not making a big impact in the market.

[blackened515]

There is no free transaction fee in the cryptocurrency if I can recall correctly, usdttrc20 were giving out free transaction on Binance exchange but suddenly, it increases from 0 to $0.5, and lastly at $1 now. I don't know what it may seem like to complete trx on the network without fee, if it happened this way meaning the world of cryptocurrency would bring more load on miners.

Transfer charge on xrp is too low but not free, same with EOS and others altcoins. Accumulation of these charges from different withdrawals gives the miners profit.

[devollito]

Free transactions is not solving any problem, it wil add new problem. Transaction cost can prevent someone for spamming the network, tranaactions fee also used for incentifying the nodes so it will attracted new nodes to come in and make the network decentralised.

[Abiky]

If a chain is more scalable, faster, cheaper ... you should know that the easiest way to achive this is to make it less decentralized. BSC, for instance has only 21 validators.

...

If you have high enough block rewards you dont need to take fees. Fees are hidden into high inflation.

You'd have to sacrifice decentralization for scalability. There's no other way around. Most of the cryptocurrencies on the market have greater transaction capacity than Bitcoin and Ethereum, but they lack decentralization and censorship-resistance. It's why we see some of these projects facing network disruptions at certain periods of time, putting users' funds at risk. People still support centralized projects like Binance Smart Chain and EOS even when they're both centralized. They prefer convenience/ease-of-use on top of decentralization/censorship-resistance. While Blockchains with free transactions are good for micropayments, they're not reliable for storing or sending large amounts of money. You're better off using Bitcoin for such purpose. Who knows who long chains with free transactions will last?

Nonetheless, there's no such thing as free lunch. There's always a catch in the wild and crazy world of crypto. The inflation justifies the Blockchain's "zero fee" model. Miners/delegators/validators will still earn from the block reward, but will not be as profitable as other coins on the market (eg: Bitcoin). Time will tell us whenever the idea of "free transactions" will become a success or a failed experiment. Just my thoughts

I use tron a lot (using trust wallet) and its not free. Its like 0.3-0.6$ per transaction. And here comes the biggest question. How majority of crypto exchanges manage to do it for free not charging even a small fee for node maintenance. I assume that Justin Sun had to do a decent deal with them. Something like - "we will mine your transaction for free + we will pay you for node maintenance just don't charge your users with fees. This will be expensive but pays out on long run by getting more and more tron lovers."

TRON is free if you "freeze" your TRX in exchange for bandwidth or energy. If you don't do that, the TRON blockchain will charge you a small amount in TRX per transaction. For those unaware, "Bandwidth" on the TRON blockchain is used for sending transactions while "Energy" is used for interacting with smart contracts. If you only need to send TRX for free, simply freeze your TRX for bandwidth. But if you need to interact with smart contracts (JustSwap, SUN Mining Pool, etc.) then you should freeze your TRX for energy. By doing this, you can use TRON without paying any fees whatsoever.

Believe me, TRON works wonders when doing day trading at an exchange. It's most effective for stablecoin transactions due to its zero fees and ultra-fast transaction confirmation times. What "kills" TRON is its utterly-centralized model. If it wasn't by that, it would've been a better contender against Ethereum. At least, we have alternative cryptocurrencies with a zero fee model. Whenever they'll succeed or fail in the long run, it's yet to be determined.

[SistaFista]

I think the coins you mentioned above have transaction fees on its own blockchain, they have low fees compare with Ethereum or Bitcoin indeed.
But mate, lets imagine if all coins are free from transaction fees. Anyone can make unlimited transactions with no fee.
The coin need to prevent burst transactions from that, so the network won't be congested.
You see in Ethereum, even the gas fee is high, but the transactions volume is still high. So, what if no gas fee in Ethereum blockchain ? 

[Ucy]

The model could work and remain sustainable in a merit-based system that is based on solving important/useful problems ,hardwork etc.
The problem solving and hardwork could  be applicable to both the validator and user.
I think validators could be graded and automatically rewarded by the network based on number of transactions they processed, speed ,the quality of their work, efficiency, etc.

[leea-1334]

I think some networks use free transactions but because it does not cost them anything more than they are already doing to validate as nodes/validators. They usually fix the fee to something small later with utility.

The catch can also be centralization or not enough distributed nodes (all nodes in one hand).

[Tytanowy Janusz]

You see in Ethereum, even the gas fee is high, but the transactions volume is still high. So, what if no gas fee in Ethereum blockchain ?  

Because ETH has hudge liquidity in liquidity pools. Means that if ETH pump/dump on CEXes arbitrage traders have to:

1- arbitrage buy ETH od DEX to dump on CEX
2- triangular arbitrage between alt/ETH of every signle token that has also alt/USDT, alt/USDC etc pairs.

Symilar happens if every single eth token pumps. Even if no real user would use ETH, arbitrage will generate enough traffic to still call ETH an expensive chain.

[max6575]

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[semobo]

Free transactions may attract more people when the other coins have insane transaction fees but until now they aren't successful with such idea. And I don't believe on free stuffs as well, because its a known fact that if you are getting something for free then you are the actual product to make profits.

[SistaFista]

Free transactions may attract more people when the other coins have insane transaction fees but until now they aren't successful with such idea. And I don't believe on free stuffs as well, because its a known fact that if you are getting something for free then you are the actual product to make profits.

Indeed, and i think free transaction will encourage malicious users to spam the network using countless transactions.
Not all free things are good, sometimes it is better to getting charge of fees, but of course the fee should not too high.

[Abiky]

Free transactions may attract more people when the other coins have insane transaction fees but until now they aren't successful with such idea. And I don't believe on free stuffs as well, because its a known fact that if you are getting something for free then you are the actual product to make profits.

Most blockchain networks with free transactions aren't successful at all because they're missing decentralization/censorship-resistance. People cannot trust something that's centralized subject to fraud and manipulation in the long term. Consider what happened with IOTA some time ago where the network was stopped for a couple of hours. The downtime of the centralized coordinator node jeopardized the reliability of the whole network. With a decentralized Blockchain network, downtimes and/or other network disruptions are no longer possible. Fees exist in order to protect the network against external attacks. Without them, it'll be much easier to spam the network. I guess that's why coins with free transactions like EOS, TRON, IOTA, NANO, and STEEM haven't got much traction. They're only useful for micropayments, but not for serious transactions involving a large amount of money.

Nonetheless, there's no such thing as "free lunch". Everything comes with a catch. It's all a matter of exploiting every opportunity to become successful in real life. I doubt "zero-fee" coins will become sustainable in the long run, as miners/stakers/validators are mostly into crypto for profit. It may all go down the drain once the hype fades away in the future. Just my thoughts

[motun01]

Free transactions on the Blockchain are not economically viable and feasible because there are miners and validators that make it possible for transactions to be done, processed and validated on the blockchain. The case may be a very low transaction cost.
This happens mainly with new generation coins with a high speed blockchain and other algorithms apart for POW, algorithms like Proof of stake allows for a Blockchain to facilitate transactions at very low cost