I used to think gas fees were the price of seriousness. If a chain was busy and fees were high, it meant demand was real. Then I watched stablecoin volume cross $10 trillion annually, and most of that value was just people moving dollars, not chasing yield. That made me question what we’re actually pricing.
If gas fees disappear, scarcity doesn’t vanish. It moves. On the surface, zero-fee transfers look like a user experience upgrade. Underneath, they shift value away from taxing transactions and toward controlling liquidity, settlement speed, and validator positioning. Plasma’s model suggests that if stablecoins represent over $150 billion in circulating supply, the real bottleneck is not blockspace pricing but reliable dollar throughput.
Understanding that helps explain why Ethereum’s gas spikes to $20 or $40 per transaction during congestion matter less for whales and more for smaller users. Fees create exclusion. Remove them, and access expands. Meanwhile, scarcity becomes about liquidity depth. If billions in USDT volume on Binance depend on fast arbitrage loops, then chains that minimize friction quietly become infrastructure, not experiments.
Of course, zero fees raise questions. Spam risk increases. Validators need incentives. If this holds, value accrues to the network that earns steady liquidity rather than extracts per transaction rent. That changes how we measure strength.
Maybe the next phase of crypto isn’t about making transactions expensive to prove demand. It’s about making liquidity scarce, trusted, and earned.
