why eth fund is deducted when sending tokens

Question

I am testing on the Ropsten net.

I created the standard ERC20 token with the Token Factory. Then I sent some tokens to another ETH address with myetherwallet. What I found was that my ETH balance was deducted for the transaction fee. And the receiver could NOT send the tokens back because there was no ETH in his wallet.

So here is the question, does it behavior the same on the Main net?
And can the transaction fee come from token, to be specific, the ETH balance stays the same and the token balance is deducted for the transaction fee?
The main concern is that if it always deducts ETH balance, and as not all participants have ETH balance, how would the token circulate？

Answer 1

Every transaction that is not a view (aka. read-only) type...will require gas to initiate. Gas is paid in ETH, so you will need ETH in order to transact with any ERC20 tokens.

Although there are proposals for transactions gas being paid via. token (https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/865) ...for now, all participants are required to have some ETH to pay for interactions with a contract.