Also, I'm well aware of GDAX and coinbase and their pitfalls and benefits, but that doesn't have much to do with the discussion of fees and why they are necessary.
There are even ways to get around the extreme majority of the fees for settlement transactions! Look up Channel factories for an idea on how even the opening and settlement transactions can be reduced to about 10% of their current size/cost for a single user. And there might be ways of interacting with channel factories to keep those settlement transactions off the main blockchain for the most part!
Also, I'm fairly certain IOTA doesn't have any TX fees, as well as several others that came before RaiBlocks.
- partially closed source
- has its own custom crypto
- uses a bizarre internal trinary digit system, instead of binary
- I've heard that it doesn't actually work, as in, you can't perform transactions
In terms of the top ~25 coins by market cap, AFAIK RaiBlocks is the only feeless one which acutally works. Regardless, it's worth watching these coins to see how the economics work out.