Will feeless blockchains have a future?

[Abiky]

There are a few "blockchain networks" which don't charge a fee per transaction. This makes them useful for micropayments, when you really want don't want to break the bank. Many DAGs like NANO and IOTA are feeless by design, so this should make them extremely-practical networks for day-to-day payments. But sometimes I wonder how such cryptocurrencies are able to survive in the long run without an incentive mechanism. After all, the network fees are what attracts miners (or stakers/validators) into helping secure the blockchain against double spend attacks.

Without any incentive, validators would be participating in a voluntary manner. This means, coins without a network fee would be less-secure than those with a network fee. You can see how Bitcoin is the most secure cryptocurrency in the world, even though many criticize its high network fees (although they've lowered recently). A high network fee will attract as much miners/stakers/validators into the Blockchain, effectively keeping it extremely secure against double spend attacks. The end user would benefit a lot from zero fees, but those who support the blockchain itself won't. That's why I believe zero-fee chains will ultimately fail in the long run. Or maybe I'm wrong?

What do you think about this? Will feeless blockchains have a future? If not, why? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Jawhead999]

Honestly any network fee is cheap in the first place, but the fees will increase if there's many transactions using that's network. Also the fees in centralized network is smaller since they don't need to have a lot validators, unlike decentralized one. So any new project that using new network will have cheap fees, it doesn't need a project that aim to offer cheap fees.

I think Bitcoin run in lightning network is already a solution for high fees, while Ethereum is too much drama and there's no progress at all.

[PrivacyG]

I understand both sides.  As users, we want low to no fees.  As miners, we want fees.  If there is no incentive, there will be fewer miners.  With fewer miners, the network will be less secure.

This is why I support fees.  They may not always be so friendly.  But we need a secure network.  And if incentivizing means better security, would you accept the compromise?  Or would you have a less secure network with zero fees.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

[MAAManda]

Due to the fact that the network is not fully decentralized, projects that implement DAG should have no future. But what we see today is the complete opposite of what it should be. We can see that $MIOTA is currently ranked #67 on CMC, this indicates that the crypto community is still happy with IOTA and is still using it. Perhaps the only thing that can make the trust lost from DAG projects is the occurrence of big cases that are closely related to the centralization of DAG networks. BTW, I don't like this discussion, this discussion will be an endless discussion, even though we all already have the answer that Blockchain is better than DAG, LOL.

[Dave1]

What do you think about this? Will feeless blockchains have a future? If not, why? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

As you have said, if there is no incentive, then why would someone be interested on it?

And this is the only reason why this coin is just low key for the last 5 years and maybe their contemporaries are gaining such ground in that short amount of time. Of course, they can remain in the market and survived the bear market, but making good gains in the bull run? might just be average runs as again compare to others which like have x amount of gains already. So this kind of projects are in the middle ground.

[Crypt0Gore]

The feeless part is not enough to make a crypto project a successful one, I was here in 2018 and I've seen two feeless projects, fast forward to today many people don't even know these projects.

If all a project have to offer adopters is the feeless part it's not going anywhere, crypto still lacks the mass adoption part and I am waiting for the first crypto project that will really be adopted worldwide. Not even Bitcoin because it's adoption rate is like 1% of the world population. And to me that sucks.

[DapanasFruit]

People will always be asking 'what's in it for me' in deciding things and this can still be true with the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. Hence, if players will not be getting something as rewards and they are just for voluntary basis there is a strong chance that things will not last that long. Rewards can be so important in any platform or situation as they can be the reasons why things are moving on. On the part of the users, a feeless or free blockchain can be good but in terms of longevity there can be a big problem unless something can be devised to make things working despite not charging a fee for every transaction.

[jrrsparkles]

There are a few "blockchain networks" which don't charge a fee per transaction. This makes them useful for micropayments, when you really want don't want to break the bank. Many DAGs like NANO and IOTA are feeless by design, so this should make them extremely-practical networks for day-to-day payments. But sometimes I wonder how such cryptocurrencies are able to survive in the long run without an incentive mechanism. After all, the network fees are what attracts miners (or stakers/validators) into helping secure the blockchain against double spend attacks.

Without any incentive, validators would be participating in a voluntary manner. This means, coins without a network fee would be less-secure than those with a network fee. You can see how Bitcoin is the most secure cryptocurrency in the world, even though many criticize its high network fees (although they've lowered recently). A high network fee will attract as much miners/stakers/validators into the Blockchain, effectively keeping it extremely secure against double spend attacks. The end user would benefit a lot from zero fees, but those who support the blockchain itself won't. That's why I believe zero-fee chains will ultimately fail in the long run. Or maybe I'm wrong?

What do you think about this? Will feeless blockchains have a future? If not, why? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Honestly, in the long run they will lose the volunteers who acts as validators so either they have to switch for existing mining mechanism or PoS like ethereum then only the miners or stake holders will be there to validate the blockchain or else as you said less validation means its prone to security vulnerabilities so among users it will lose the interest.

[poodle63]

The statistics said that if cheap fees blockchain has impressive performance compared with the fee less blockchain. As you said that the problem is fee less blockchain is truly centralized blockchain just like IOTA being secured by the server which is under control by the developers itself.

I will prefer to take cheap fees network rather than fee less network as long as it has better decentralization. I don't mind to pay 0.01 cent for any transaction in the network. The problem is also cheap fees blockchain was also centralized as it has been running by some nodes act as validators that being owned by company who launched the blockchain.

In conclusion cheap fees blockchain and less fees blockchains are centralized.

[posi]

What do you think about this? Will feeless blockchains have a future? If not, why? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

As you say, it also makes me wonder how those blockchains would exist without network fees, but there is one thing we need to consider here. All current blockchains are moving towards the trend of the cheapest possible network fees, investors have also abandoned ETH because of high gas fees. Another thing is that NANO and IOTA are working fine so far without any hiccups.

while Ethereum is too much drama and there's no progress at all.

ETH has not completed the upgrade yet, gas fees will be resolved in other updates and everything is planned. High BTC fees also take a long time to resolve, so give ETH more time.

[Yogee]

I was trying to check on IOTA's volume of transactions but I had no idea how their Tangle explorer work. Maybe someone familiar could pull up the numbers for us. It would be a good data to somehow predict the future of these chains. One should expect that there are more activity or daily transactions there compare to Ethereum which still has a high network fee.

[Jackl87]

There are a few "blockchain networks" which don't charge a fee per transaction. This makes them useful for micropayments, when you really want don't want to break the bank. Many DAGs like NANO and IOTA are feeless by design, so this should make them extremely-practical networks for day-to-day payments. But sometimes I wonder how such cryptocurrencies are able to survive in the long run without an incentive mechanism. After all, the network fees are what attracts miners (or stakers/validators) into helping secure the blockchain against double spend attacks.

What do you think about this? Will feeless blockchains have a future? If not, why? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I think it all depends on the functionality that the blockchain projects are trying to bring. If i am not wrong then IOTA was specifically created to serve the internet-of-things and the whole industry 4.0 stuff. This means that machines or factories could basically interact via the IOTA network and if their needs to be a payment made between one actor and another then this can also be made with IOTA. That is the reason why a transaction on IOTA is free because if there are maybe hundreds of interactions every minutes between machines or something then this would just be impractical if a fee would be needed for everyone of them.

[Abiky]

I understand both sides.  As users, we want low to no fees.  As miners, we want fees.  If there is no incentive, there will be fewer miners.  With fewer miners, the network will be less secure.

This is why I support fees.  They may not always be so friendly.  But we need a secure network.  And if incentivizing means better security, would you accept the compromise?  Or would you have a less secure network with zero fees.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

Me too. I'd prefer to pay fees just to contribute towards the security and reliability of the underlying blockchain network. Bitcoin may be slow and expensive at times, but its level of security is unmatched. I guess that's why no other cryptocurrency has been able to take its place on the market yet. It's not about how many bells and whistles a cryptocurrency has, but rather how secure it is against external attacks. Cryptocurrencies with zero fees aren't that popular these days, especially when they're way below the top coins in market cap.

Miners/stakers/validators ultimately decide which coin stays on top and which one goes all the way down the drain. Who knows if Nano, Iota, and other DAG-based cryptos become history soon? Just my opinion