This argument about the need for a “thing” to grant substance to the relational network is of course the obvious objection. It is one I address at length in my (in progress) book. You fundamentally have to decide between two evils: magic or infinity. The reductive assumption is that you hit some fundament of properties that are intrinsic- these are properties that have no explanation and of which, if anyone asks why they are this way, the only answer is “because!” This is clearly irrational and you might even say unscientific. There’s a contradiction between the explanatory project of science and this metaphysical assumption of intrinsic properties. There alternative is infinite regress of sorts, although that does not imply no smallest thing or infinity in any specific dimension. It simply says that the properties of things are always based on some relation and any finite “value” that appears intrinsic is a kind of cut we are making in the infinite fabric of existence, an approximation. In the theoretical space, the properties we declare to be intrinsic represent both the boundaries of the theory and its limitations and approximations.
Of course in the formulation “correlations without correlata” (Mermin) there *are* correlata - the observed values of the entangled properties. But these are just relational too, in RQM. Being is a property of the totality of existence, which is infinite. It does not “bubble up” from some set of fundamental properties at the base of the ontological hierarchy.
This runs against deep western prejudice but is entirely coherent. Of course it is also an unprovable metaphysics. But so are intrinsic properties. I agree this relational view of things is more “yin” to use the Daoist term than the “yang” of “thingism”. We are talking about philosophical predispositions that go back to India and China on the one hand, and Greece on the other.