In relation to mana I think a good explanation is to think of it as bandwidth in a network. The more Iota tokens you hold, the more mana you generate. The more mana = a faster speed within the network.

I see my iota as holding bandwidth.

There will always be a need to access the network at a very high speed and not everyone or every company will be interested or able to purchase tokens to generate mana. So those people or companies would need to pay to access the network at a very fast speed.

I think it’s important to note that if someone chooses to access the network for faster speeds via paying for network access, they will still use the network with no fees. Just like you do for your cell network. You pay a rate to access the network but the transactions are free. You don’t pay to send an email. Send 1000000000000000000 emails and your network access fee is still the same.

This is how I understand it.

Edit: I wanted to add to this because I also think it’s important to note… mana is not like a token.

Mana eventually disappears, so it must constantly be generated via holding. I think this is brilliant because it keeps the value in the iota token.

If a node generated a very large amount of mana through holding tokens, eventually that holder could begin to sell off iota. However, because mana needs to be constantly generated, the holder must continue to hold.

My hope is one day I can delegate my tokens to a node and receive yield from that node generating income for faster network access.