The article you're linking is an extremely dishonest anonymous hit piece that distorts history to manipulate the audience.

The design of Bitcoin where security is supported by fees to get into blocks is established in the Bitcoin whitepaper and has been in the software since day one.

Contrary to the claims of the article the term "fee market" was introduced and promoted by Jeff Garzik-- rather than people opposing him as the article claims. (Fee market is kind of a bad term, the correct term would be blockspace market, but it actually made sense in the original usage which was about wallets paying 'fees at market rates').

> The answer is lies in the free market. Move transaction fees away from hardcoded limits, and towards something more dynamic, with economic feedback between merchants, users and miners. ... Also introduced is an anti-spam rule that avoids relaying transactions whose value is below that of the transaction fee required to send it. This rule self-adjusts over time, as the "tx fee required to send" changes over time. In a dynamic fee market, it might change a lot.

( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196138.msg2044717#ms... )

> 2010-11-19 20:55:42 <jgarzik> eventually we'll all be paying TX fees, sooner or later. and competition to get -some- fee (at lower prices) versus no fee kicks in.

> 2011-02-28 04:13:57 <jgarzik> amiller: it's inevitable that fees will be required. nobody should be assuming bitcoin transactions are / will always be free.

> 2011-03-01 20:32:21 <jgarzik> fees are inevitable

> 2011-03-10 22:14:34 <jgarzik> I think TX fees are a great feedback
system; a healthy attribute of bitcoin.

> 2011-11-07 22:43:12 <gavinandresen> Lolcust: yes, but I worry because transaction fees are broken right now-- clients and miners really need more flexibility to let fees go where the market decides, instead of us guessing what the right fees are.

> 2012-10-11 17:01:27 <jgarzik> gmaxwell: I think storage and network
will be cheap enough that any non-zero fees will be interesting to
miners

> 2013-03-16 00:47:40 <gavinandresen> So: I have no idea what the right answer for fees is. We need to create a market between miners and users, and let the fees go where they belong.

> 2013-03-17 21:12:04 <jgarzik> TD: Satoshi obviously wanted fees to
support the system long term. If there is no scarcity, there are no
fees.

And people being willing to pay substantive fees to use Bitcoin is absolutely something to celebrate, Bitcoin's long term security is completely dependent on fee income. Getting a non-trivial part of the rewards from fees is a basic validation of the concept.

> 2013-03-17 21:12:44 <jgarzik> TD: The current situation, where block
subsidy dominates other incentives, clouds thinking on block size

> 2013-08-12 17:59:33 <jgarzik> auctions make me want replace-by-fee :)

> 2014-05-12 15:13:22 <gavinandresen> hearn: fee cap, meaning what? Fees need to be a market, and rise or fall based on supply and demand for block space

> 2014-08-15 12:37:53 <jgarzik> Merge this useful change, and next will come the call to remove block size limit altogether, which will throw a nuclear bomb onto any nascent fee market.

> 2014-08-15 12:38:37 <jgarzik> All the VCs and execs want an infinite
block size limit. It's a sad fixation.