My question

[zhanb]

"did:ion is a registry based on Bitcoin's Sidetree and it is well known that transaction fees on the Bitcoin blockchain can be very expensive. In the case of did:ion registrations, who is responsible for paying these fees, and could there be a situation where the registry provider cannot afford the high fees, resulting in unresolved did registrations?"

[thehenrytsai]

Anyone can perform registrations as long as they are willing to to pay the Bitcoin transaction fee. One Bitcoin transaction can "register" up to 10,000 DIDs. Even with never before seen transaction fee of $100, it'll work out to be 1c per registration, so it is not "all that expensive" if there is utility of these DIDs.

The more likely case is that a free-provider chooses to wait longer to batch more registration into one transaction, so there could be an unknown delay to a DID registration (this is already the case with Microsoft's and Block/TBD's nodes), as opposed to not being able to register at all for a prolonged period of time.

While waiting on the DID registration to occur, one can always use the "long-form" DID to start interacting with services.

[csuwildcat]

Pending close, given the provided explanation.