I am quite opposed to this feature being included in core…
First, why is it even discussed?
-
Is it to solve an hypothetical spam problem? If so, I am sure there are other purely technical solutions for this problem.
-
Is it to “reward” the node owners? If so, I am sure it is not needed. uCoin has some specific values attached to it that attract certain individuals only (basic income, freedom, etc…). These people are not in for the profit. Having a free money and basic income for all is incentive enough to run a node. Communities, cooperatives, families or even town halls can decide to fund extra nodes if needed. It is a public/community service. Without these nodes, there is no uCoin.
-
Is it to cover the server and power costs? It is hard to evaluate how much cost a transaction. People have different server rigs, different usage, etc… Also let me emphasize it again: I am quite sure people are not in uCoin for the profit. An perhaps more in for the values than for the money itself. It doesn’t matter to cover costs if you run a uCoin node on 20% CPU of your home server that is running anyway. Or in a server funded by a community cooperative to make uCoin and free money happen.
I really think it does not matter to most people interested in uCoin to be financially rewarded for making uCoin happen. If they wish to be rewarded nevertheless, there are alternative means: call for funds, kickstarting a giant node, get a patron, etc…
Also someone said that nodes can treat the blockchain transactions they wish, am I correct? If so, we could totally imagine a business centered around high availability node clusters that will treat only the blockchain transactions of their clients in a very quick and efficient way. It’s just one idea among others.
True not having transaction fees will be disappointing to someone who wants to make big money out of cryptocurrency and avoid taxes altogether with a multi-GPU power hungry cheap server farm. I don’t care. They can mine bitcoins/litecoins/dogecoin/whatever and earn free untracable money (as in free beer) between themselves. These people are very unlikely to be involved in a free money (as in freedom) with a basic income anyway. They won’t use uCoin if there is no profit for them to be found there. Or if there is no more profit for them than for the next guy. So let’s not give them “weapons” to do that. I can totally live with them not being part of my economic and social circles.
In my opinion, this feature should not be part of the core at all. If you give the core the ability to incorporate fees, you will make transaction fees. This is not unlike what Jacques Ellul blamed technology for. People will start wondering “well I can earn money with my node by just activating a parameter on my node because it is part of the core. Well why not… I was not in for the profit but if there can be profit LET IT SNOW B*TCH!” And bam now we have hundreds of nodes collecting fees just because they can. Not because they need or because they intrisically want, just because they can…
I think this is a really bad idea that has absolutely no reason to exist in uCoin and that can only make uCoin worse.