it doesn't take millions to operate a chain in 2026
in fact you can currently offer a pretty high quality L2 for less than $500k in infra per year:
sequencing+proving/RaaS: $200k
RPC: $50k
oracles (price feeds + VRF): $70k
block explorer: $20k
indexer: $15k
multisig: $25k
smart contract tooling: $30k
security monitoring: $75k
L1 costs: like $5k? lol
total: $490k per year
a few things to clarify:
> at this rate you're not getting Etherscan, Chainlink or Dune (add about $1m per year to include them all)
> to add a custodian (like Fireblock), that's another $100k recurring
> some providers might require one-time integration fees
> if you're not running a plain vanilla L2 (Linea stack, OP stack, etc.), you'll need to add audit costs for any small change you make (and this can go anywhere from $20k to $500k per audit)
of course this doesn't include team, liquidity incentives or marketing, which is actually what costs millions 🙃