Andre Cronje, the co-founder of Sonic Labs, formerly known as Fantom, has laid bare the actual costs involved in operating a blockchain network, emphasizing that even a partially successful endeavor incurs significant financial obligations. Cronje has detailed the breakdown of initial costs related to crucial components such as oracles and stablecoins, which can total a staggering $7.5 million.
This amount is followed by annual costs that tally up to $3.5 million. Specifically, for essential services like RPC (Remote Procedure Call), indexing, and dashboards, the startup costs amount to $200,000, with recurring annual costs reaching $70,000. Additionally, other yearly expenditures that should be taken into account include $50,000 allocated for VRF (Verifiable Random Function), as well as keepers, wallet support, and governance, and an additional $80,000 for explorers, custody, and risk management, bringing the cumulative expenditure to a shocking total of $13.2 million. In a further examination of Sonic Labs' operational expenses over the past year, Cronje revealed that research and development accounted for a hefty $10.9 million, while ecosystem-related expenses amounted to $10.7 million.
The legal fees reached $410,000, with compliance costs associated with regulatory frameworks hitting $3.8 million. Infrastructure expenses came in at $2.4 million, and the investments in marketing were pegged at $1.4 million. Moreover, bounties amounted to $1.2 million, sponsorships contributed $400,000, while media-related costs were estimated at $350,000.
Regarding regulatory compliance and event-related expenditures, these added up to $200,000 and $100,000, respectively. Overall, the total costs for Sonic Labs for the year stood at a staggering $35.6 million. It’s worth noting that these figures do not encompass the additional expenses that would arise from being listed on exchanges, a fortunate circumstance for the organization this year..