The importance of feeless transactions for decentralization
With Coordicide1 coming along well, IOTA is progressing into becoming the most decentralized protocol in the crypto space and IoT. This is in part thanks to feeless transactions, a fundamental feature for a free and fair future for both man and machine.
The IOTA network to date transacted $180+ billion2, without costing even 1 cent in transaction fees. That’s unprecedented.
However, the importance of “feeless” goes beyond the financial benefit of not paying a transaction fee. What I love about the IOTA protocol is that it’s not just money. Instead it revolves around the bigger concept of value. This is where the absence of fees truly comes into play.
What’s in a name: 0-value transactions
IOTA has two basic transactions: value transactions that transfer IOTA tokens, and 0-value transactions that send data.3 In discussions with others I notice people underestimate the economic weight of 0-value transactions. You can forgive people disregarding their importance, because the name doesn’t help. It’s a bit of a misnomer, and perhaps we should rethink its name, because in terms of utility these “non value transactions” put a tremendous weight on the scale.
