What is the purpose of fellowships?

[Enla]

I am thinking they are better linkshells.

Pretty much this, though it begs the question what use Linkshells will be after they're implemented. Frankly they seem designed to act as an in game way for things like discord communities to coordinate. While the max member amount is still too small for something like, say, the Balance Discord to have everyone on it, it's stilll a huge step up in terms of keeping everyone in one centralized in game chat while they play.