IOTA’s potential for decentralization
With Coordicide1 coming along well, IOTA is progressing really nicely into becoming the most versatile protocol in the cryptospace and beyond. It is going to be fundamental in a decentralized society for humans and machines.
What I love about the IOTA protocol is that it’s not just money. Instead it revolves around the bigger concept of value. A big factor promoting this are IOTA’s feeless transactions.
Fee-dom vs. freedom
Cryptocurrencies’ decentralization seems to largely focus around the consensus process. And as said earlier, that is an essential part to decentralize, but it’s not all there is. Another vital feature of decentralized network to me is the lack of fees. Transaction fees are a popular way to support consensus building, and do rate control and Sybil protection. IOTA does not have such transaction fees. This makes it free, except not that kind of free.
IOTA still costs energy to transact. You might even pay someone to do the work for you. That might sound paradoxical, but I’m making this point on purpose. Not having to pay a fee isn’t about the money.2 It’s because fee and free could not be further apart when discussing decentralized transactions.
Free beyond finance
The free mentioned above is not having to pay a third party for the privilege to participate. Or even ask for permission to participate. This leaves you unrestricted from control by others. Most cryptocurrency protocols aim for minimizing fees.3
