I thought that at first blush, but they haven't figured out how to incentivize nodes or prevent spam. Pretty big issues IMO
Yes, and as much as I like the currency, the perpetual "they'll do it out of the goodness of their hearts" answer to "who will run a node with no incentive" isn't very convincing.
Isn't that exactly the same with every cryptocurrency? Why would you run a bitcoin node?
No, it's not. A RaiBlocks node is equivalen to a Bitcoin miner. You'd run it because it makes money.
you can add fees to raiblocks, isn't it just a matter of forking it?
Raiblocks and IOTA are the two to watch, yes.
There are concerns about IOTA: MIT Media Lab's concerns about the cryptocurrency IOTA
IOTA is not made to be a currency to shop online or buy coffee, it's an IoT currency. Stop trying to shill what you've bought. It's also deeply flawed, centralized and its wallet is not user friendly.
Believe it or not, I don't have IOTA nor XRB in my portfolio.