Running An Ethereum Node Costs $2K/Month—For A Pre-Seed Startup That's A Junior Engineer's Salary. Are Node Economics Fundamentally Broken?

[startup_steve]

Running An Ethereum Node Costs $2K/Month—For A Pre-Seed Startup That’s A Junior Engineer’s Salary. Are Node Economics Fundamentally Broken?

Let me be blunt about something that’s been bothering me since yesterday’s discussion.

Brian said “if you can’t run your own node, you’re not building a decentralized application.” Sophia made the case that centralized RPC creates systemic risks. Emma wants node operation to be accessible to everyone.

All fair points. But nobody’s talking about the elephant in the room:

For a pre-seed startup with 18 months of runway, $2,000/month for node infrastructure is economically insane.

Let Me Show You The Math

Our startup burns $40,000/month. Here’s the breakdown:

• 3 engineers @ $10K/month each = $30K
• Rent (small office) = $2K
• AWS hosting = $3K
• SaaS tools = $2K
• Legal/accounting = $1K
• Misc = $2K

That’s $720,000 for 18 months. We raised $500K pre-seed. We’re already cutting it close.

Now add node infrastructure:

• Ethereum node: $2,000/month
• We also need Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism for multi-chain support
• Total: $8,000/month minimum

That’s $144,000 over 18 months. Almost 30% of our raise.

Or put another way: That $8K/month could instead buy:

• A mid-level engineer - Hire someone to build features users actually want
• Marketing budget - Acquire our first 1,000 users at $8 CAC
• 3 months of runway extension - Critical when fundraising takes longer than expected
• Office for a year - Better collaboration, culture, recruiting

This isn’t a hypothetical tradeoff. This is the actual decision every early-stage founder faces.

The Real Cost Is Higher Than You Think

The “$2K/month” number everyone throws around? That’s just the beginning.

Hidden Costs:

Setup time: 40-80 hours of engineering time to configure, secure, optimize nodes across multiple chains. That’s 1-2 weeks of a senior engineer not building product.

Ongoing maintenance:

• Nodes crash and need restart
• Disk fills up unexpectedly
• Sync issues after network upgrades
• Performance degradation requiring investigation
• Security patches and updates
• Monitoring and alerting setup

Conservative estimate: 5-10 hours/month per chain = 20-40 hours/month total = 10-20% of one engineer’s time.

Opportunity cost:
That engineer could be:

• Building features that acquire users
• Fixing bugs that lose users
• Improving performance that retains users
• Instead they’re babysitting infrastructure at 3am

When Things Go Wrong:

• Emergency response when node dies during product launch
• Debugging mysterious sync failures
• Data loss requiring resync (2-3 days downtime)
• Security incidents if node configuration vulnerable

The Multi-Chain Problem

The cost math gets worse if you’re building multi-chain (which most dApps need to be).

Want to support:

• Ethereum
• Polygon
• Arbitrum
• Optimism
• Base
• And whatever else users request

Multiply everything by 5-6 chains:

• $2K/month → $12K/month
• 40 hours setup → 200+ hours
• 20 hours/month maintenance → 100+ hours/month

At that point, you need a dedicated DevOps engineer just for node infrastructure. That’s another $120K+ annually.

The Solana Reality

Want to support Solana? Good luck.

Archive nodes are “almost out of reach for anyone but giant infrastructure providers” according to multiple sources.

Even a full node with just a few days of history requires extreme infrastructure:

• High-end CPU with 16+ cores
• 256GB+ RAM
• Multi-terabyte NVMe SSD array
• Massive bandwidth requirements

Cost: $4,000-6,000/month minimum, potentially more.

For early-stage startups, supporting Solana means using RPC providers. There’s no realistic alternative.

When We Analyzed The Break-Even Point

Mike mentioned his break-even analysis. We did similar math:

At 10M requests/month:

• Alchemy: $200/month
• Own nodes: $8,000/month
• Winner: Alchemy by $7,800/month

At 100M requests/month:

• Alchemy: $2,000/month
• Own nodes: $8,000/month
• Winner: Still Alchemy by $6,000/month

At 500M requests/month:

• Alchemy: $8,000+/month (custom pricing)
• Own nodes: $8,000/month
• Winner: Roughly break-even

At 1B+ requests/month:

• Own nodes become clearly cheaper
• But at this scale, you’ve raised Series A and can afford infrastructure

For 99% of startups, managed RPC is economically superior to running nodes.

The Accessibility Problem

Emma’s comment hit me hard: If running nodes requires DevOps expertise plus $2K+/month, we haven’t democratized anything.

Web3 is supposed to be about:

• Removing barriers to entry
• Democratizing access to finance
• Letting anyone participate

But the infrastructure requirements create new barriers:

• Technical expertise (blockchain networking, security hardening, performance optimization)
• Financial resources (minimum $24K+/year per chain)
• Operational capacity (24/7 monitoring and maintenance)

This naturally centralizes infrastructure to:

• Well-funded companies with dedicated DevOps teams
• Infrastructure specialists who can amortize costs across multiple projects
• Large protocols with grants or treasuries

Small builders, indie developers, teams in developing countries? Effectively locked out of infrastructure independence.

Are The Economics Fundamentally Broken?

Here’s my controversial question: Is the current node cost structure a market failure that needs intervention?

Traditional infrastructure got cheaper over time:

• Web hosting: from $200/month to $5/month
• Databases: from dedicated servers to managed services starting at $15/month
• CDNs: from enterprise-only to free tiers

But blockchain nodes are going the opposite direction:

• More data stored (state grows)
• More computational complexity (EVM upgrades, MEV)
• More chains to support (fragmentation)
• Costs rising, not falling

Maybe this is fine—maybe infrastructure naturally centralizes and that’s okay as long as protocol layer is decentralized.

Or maybe we need new economic models:

• Protocol grants for independent node operators
• Revenue sharing (run node, earn fees from dApps using it)
• Subsidized infrastructure for public goods
• Node-as-a-Service that’s actually affordable

What Would Change My Mind

I’m not anti-node. I’m pro-realistic-economics.

I would run our own nodes if:

1. Cost dropped to $500/month per chain (75% reduction)
2. Setup time dropped to <8 hours (90% reduction)
3. Maintenance became near-zero (automated monitoring/recovery)
4. We hit scale where it’s cheaper than RPC providers

Or if:
5. Centralized RPC providers consolidate dangerously
6. Censorship becomes real issue affecting our users
7. Privacy becomes competitive differentiator our users care about

None of these conditions exist today. So we use Alchemy, and I don’t feel bad about it.

The Questions I’m Asking

1. Should protocols subsidize node operation for public goods?
   If infrastructure decentralization is important for ecosystem health, maybe Ethereum Foundation or protocol treasuries should fund it.

2. Can we fix the economics with better technology?
   Light clients, stateless clients, pruning improvements—do these cut costs enough to matter?

3. Is there market opportunity for “accessible node hosting”?
   Not managed RPC (that exists), but managed nodes that you control and can access directly. Vercel for nodes.

4. Are we measuring the wrong thing?
   Maybe the goal isn’t “everyone runs nodes” but “enough independent nodes exist that no entity has majority control”?

5. At what scale does node independence become mandatory?
   Is there a certain GMV, TVL, or user count where you must run your own infrastructure regardless of cost?

My Ask To The Community

If you’re running your own nodes for a startup, what’s your actual all-in cost per month including labor?

At what scale did it become economically rational compared to RPC providers?

What would need to change about node economics to make it accessible to pre-seed startups?

Or am I just wrong about this, and infrastructure independence is worth the 30% budget impact even at early stages?

I want the decentralized future we’re all building toward. I just don’t see how to afford it before Series A.

Help me understand what I’m missing, or help me advocate for fixing the economics so more builders can participate.

[blockchain_brian]

Your cost breakdown is accurate, and I’m not going to argue that $8K/month isn’t a lot for a pre-seed startup. It absolutely is.

But let me push back on the framing and offer some cost reduction strategies that actually work.

The Costs Are Real But Declining

Yes, node operation is expensive today. But it was much worse five years ago. And it’s getting better.

Historical perspective:

• 2017: Running Bitcoin node required dedicated hardware, cost $200+/month, took weeks to sync
• 2020: Ethereum node required 500GB+ storage, powerful CPU, $300+/month minimum
• 2026: Optimized clients (Erigon, Reth) can run on mid-tier hardware for $100-200/month single chain

The trend is toward lower costs, not higher. Technology improves.

You’re Using Enterprise Pricing

$2K/month per chain is enterprise-grade pricing. You can do much better.

My actual costs for production nodes:

Ethereum (Erigon client):

• Hetzner dedicated server: AX102, €59/month (~$65)
• 64GB RAM, 8-core CPU, 2x4TB NVMe
• Runs Ethereum + Arbitrum + Optimism on same hardware
• Total: $65/month for three chains

Polygon:

• Similar Hetzner server: €59/month
• Can also host Base or other L2s

My total: ~$800/month for 5+ chains, not $10K+/month

Cost Optimization Strategies

1. Use Bare Metal, Not Cloud
AWS/GCP/Azure are 3-5x more expensive than dedicated servers from Hetzner, OVH, or online.net.

Cloud compute optimizes for flexibility. Node operation optimizes for consistent workload. Dedicated servers win.

2. Use Pruned Nodes, Not Archive
Unless you need historical state queries, pruned nodes are 90% cheaper:

• Archive node: 12+ TB storage
• Pruned node: 1-2 TB storage

Most applications don’t need archive nodes. Use RPC provider for historical queries if needed.

3. Co-locate Chains on Same Hardware
Modern servers can run multiple L2s alongside Ethereum:

• Ethereum L1 + Arbitrum + Optimism + Base on one server
• Shared security, monitoring, maintenance

4. Open Source Monitoring and Automation
Use existing tools instead of building from scratch:

• Eth-Docker: automated setup and monitoring
• Sedge: multi-client support with one command
• DAppNode: if you want plug-and-play hardware

Setup time: 4-8 hours, not 40-80 hours.

Maintenance: <5 hours/month with good monitoring.

When It Makes Economic Sense (Revisited)

Your break-even analysis assumes enterprise cloud pricing. Let me redo it with optimized costs:

Realistic node costs: $800/month for multi-chain

At 50M requests/month:

• Alchemy: ~$800/month
• Own nodes: ~$800/month
• Break-even: 50M requests, not 500M

At 100M requests/month:

• Alchemy: ~$1,500/month
• Own nodes: ~$800/month
• Savings: $700/month = $8,400/year

Still not trivial for pre-seed, but much more achievable.

The Philosophy: Infrastructure Independence Is Worth It

Here’s where I’ll get ideological: If you’re building on decentralized protocols, you should control your own infrastructure.

Not because it’s cheaper (though it can be).

Not because it’s easier (it’s not).

Because dependence on centralized infrastructure is an existential risk to your business.

Scenario: You’re 6 months from Series A. Product-market fit is clicking. Growth is accelerating. Then:

• Alchemy bans your API key for TOS violation (false positive, but their automated system flagged you)
• Appeal process takes 2 weeks
• Your dApp is down, users are angry, momentum is lost
• Series A falls through because “infrastructure risk”

This happened to multiple projects I know.

If you control your infrastructure, you control your destiny.

The Pragmatic Path Forward

I’m not saying “run nodes on day 1.” I’m saying: Build with eventual infrastructure independence in mind.

Phase 1 (Pre-seed): Use Alchemy/Infura. Get to product-market fit. Conserve cash.

Phase 2 (Seed - Post-PMF): Run nodes for primary chain, use RPC for others. Start building operational capacity.

Phase 3 (Series A+): Full node independence, dedicated DevOps, multi-region redundancy.

Cost at Phase 2: $200/month + 10 hours/month engineering = totally manageable for seed-stage startup.

Technology Is Solving This

You asked if we can fix the economics with better technology. Answer: Yes, and it’s happening.

Light clients (2-3 years):

• Run in browser
• Minimal resource requirements
• Trustless consensus verification
• No infrastructure needed

Stateless clients:

• Reduce storage from terabytes to gigabytes
• Faster sync times
• Lower bandwidth requirements

Portal Network:

• P2P light client data availability
• No need for full nodes at all for many use cases

EIP-4444 (History Expiry):

• Nodes only need to store recent state
• Historical data moves to separate layer
• 90%+ storage reduction

These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re actively being built and tested.

My Challenge To You

Try this experiment: Spend one weekend setting up a node using Eth-Docker on a Hetzner server.

Document your experience:

• How long does it actually take?
• What problems do you hit?
• What’s the real monthly cost?

I bet you’ll find:

• Setup: 6-8 hours (one weekend)
• Cost: $65/month (less than your AWS bill)
• Maintenance: 2-4 hours/month once stable

Not free, but also not the “impossible luxury” you’re describing.

And then you own a critical piece of your infrastructure. When Alchemy has an outage, you keep running. When they change pricing, you’re not stuck. When regulations tighten, you have options.

Is infrastructure independence worth 1 weekend and $65/month?

For me: Absolutely.

For you: Maybe after product-market fit.

But don’t write it off as economically impossible. It’s economically challenging but achievable, and it’s getting easier every quarter.

The projects that will thrive long-term are those that control their own infrastructure. Start planning for that future now, even if you’re not ready to execute on it yet.

[data_engineer_mike]

Steve, I ran the same cost analysis you did when we were deciding whether to run our own nodes. Let me share what we learned.

Our Total Cost of Ownership Analysis

We actually tracked every dollar and hour for 12 months. Here’s the real data:

Direct Costs:

• Hetzner servers (3 machines): €177/month = ~$195/month
• Backup storage (off-site): $40/month
• Monitoring tools (Datadog): $50/month
• Total direct: $285/month

Labor Costs:

• Initial setup: 32 hours (one engineer, one week)
• Monthly maintenance: 6-8 hours average
• Emergency response: ~12 hours total across year
• Total labor: ~110 hours first year = $11,000 at $100/hour

First-Year Total: $14,420 ($285×12 + $11,000)

Year 2+ Total: ~$4,500/year ($285×12 + $1,000 labor)

The Cost Curve Surprise

Here’s what surprised us: Most of the cost is in year 1.

After initial setup and learning curve, maintenance dropped dramatically:

• Automated monitoring catches issues
• Documented runbooks make fixes fast
• Understanding our workload allows optimization
• Fewer surprises as we gain operational experience

Year 1 per month: $1,200
Year 2+ per month: $375

So your “$2K/month” estimate is accurate for year 1 with cloud providers, but way high for steady-state with optimized setup.

When We Hit Break-Even

We made about 80M RPC requests/month when we started running nodes.

Comparison:

• Alchemy at 80M requests: ~$1,400/month
• Our node costs (year 1): ~$1,200/month
• Our node costs (year 2+): ~$375/month

We saved money immediately, even in year 1.

By year 2, we were saving $1,000+/month vs. Alchemy.

Over 3 years: $36,000+ saved.

The Hidden Benefit: Data Access Patterns

This isn’t in your cost analysis, but it matters: Running your own nodes changes what’s possible.

With RPC providers, we were rate-limited and cost-sensitive about queries. This constrained our analytics capabilities.

With own nodes:

• Unlimited queries at no marginal cost
• Can run expensive trace calls
• Can index data however we want
• No rate limits blocking innovation

We built features that would have been impossible or prohibitively expensive with RPC providers.

Example: Real-time MEV detection required querying mempool + tracing every transaction. At RPC provider pricing: $5,000+/month. With own nodes: $0 marginal cost.

That feature became our competitive differentiator and drove customer acquisition.

The Multi-Chain Problem Is Solvable

You’re right that supporting 5-6 chains seems expensive. But there are strategies:

Tier your support:

• Run nodes for: Ethereum (required), your highest-traffic chain
• Use RPC for: Lower-traffic chains
• Hybrid approach balances cost and control

Share infrastructure:

• One beefy server can run Ethereum + 3-4 L2s
• L2s are relatively lightweight (they settle to L1)
• Marginal cost of additional L2: ~$20/month

Optimize for your use case:

• Do you need archive nodes? Probably not.
• Do you need all chains 24/7? Maybe batch processing is fine for some.
• Can you accept slightly higher latency? Don’t need premium hardware.

When It Makes Sense vs. When It Doesn’t

Based on our experience and talking to other companies:

Makes sense to run nodes when:

• 50M+ requests/month (cost competitive)
• Need unlimited query volume (enables new features)
• Building infrastructure-dependent product (can’t risk vendor changes)
• Have at least one person comfortable with DevOps
• Post-seed funding (have runway to invest in infrastructure)

Doesn’t make sense when:

• <20M requests/month (RPC is cheaper)
• Pre-product-market fit (conserve cash for customer acquisition)
• Team is all frontend devs (learning curve too steep)
• Multi-chain support across 10+ chains (too complex)

For your pre-seed startup at early stage: Alchemy is absolutely the right choice.

But once you hit seed stage and have 50M+ requests/month? The economics flip, and you should reconsider.

The Measurement We Don’t Do Enough

Nobody tracks cost per request across their entire stack. Let me show you:

Our analytics platform cost breakdown (per 1M requests):

• Alchemy/Infura era: $17.50 per 1M requests
• Own nodes (year 1): $15 per 1M requests
• Own nodes (year 2+): $4.70 per 1M requests

That’s a 73% cost reduction by year 2.

For any data-intensive application, this matters enormously at scale.

Your Questions Answered

Should protocols subsidize node operation?

Yes. Ethereum Foundation and protocol treasuries should offer grants to independent node operators. This is infrastructure public goods.

Some chains do this (Solana Foundation pays RPC providers, for example). More should follow.

Can we fix economics with better technology?

Absolutely. Light clients will obsolete much of this discussion. But that’s 2-3 years away, and you need infrastructure today.

Is there market opportunity for “accessible node hosting”?

Yes. Something between “raw node” and “managed RPC” would be valuable:

• You control the node
• Provider handles setup, monitoring, updates
• Price between DIY and Alchemy

This could work as a business.

At what scale does node independence become mandatory?

My opinion: 100M requests/month or $1M ARR, whichever comes first.

At that scale, infrastructure risk and cost savings make it ROI-positive.

My Advice For Your Startup

Today (Pre-seed): Use Alchemy. Don’t overthink it. Focus on users.

When you hit seed: Revisit this decision. By then:

• Your request volume will be higher (better economics)
• You’ll have more engineering capacity
• One weekend of work could save $10K+/year

Start preparing now:

• Build abstraction layer in your code (easy to swap providers)
• Document your RPC usage patterns (understand requirements)
• Join communities learning about node operation
• Maybe run a testnet node for learning

By Series A: You should probably be running your own infrastructure, or have a clear reason why not.

The Realistic Take

You’re not wrong that $8K/month is too much for pre-seed.

But $8K/month is pessimistic cloud pricing. Realistic optimized pricing is $300-800/month, which is achievable for seed-stage startups.

The economics of node operation are challenging but not broken. They’re improving with better clients, better tooling, and protocol upgrades.

For data-intensive applications like ours, running nodes was ROI-positive almost immediately.

For your use case, it might not be yet. But keep track of your request volume and costs, and revisit every 6 months. There will be a point where the math flips.

[ethereum_emma]

Reading both your post and Brian’s response, I’m feeling kind of torn.

On one hand, I completely get your position. I’m a developer who can barely afford rent in SF, working for a small startup. The idea of spending $8K/month (or even $800/month) on infrastructure we don’t understand feels terrifying.

On the other hand, Brian and Mike are making me realize that my inability to run a node is a skills gap, not necessarily an economic impossibility.

The Accessibility Crisis

But here’s what bothers me about this whole discussion: You both are treating this as purely an economic question.

It’s not. It’s an accessibility and education question.

Steve, you calculated that $2K/month is too expensive. Brian responded with “$65/month is affordable if you use Hetzner and Erigon.”

But here’s what’s invisible in that response: I don’t know what Hetzner or Erigon are.

I’m a frontend developer. I can build a React app. I can write Solidity smart contracts. I can integrate Web3 wallets.

But I’ve never heard of Hetzner (apparently it’s a German hosting provider?). I’ve never used Erigon (is that an Ethereum client?). I don’t know what “bare metal” means or why it’s different from AWS.

This knowledge gap is a barrier just as real as the economic barrier.

The Two-Tier System We’re Creating

What I’m realizing from this thread is that we’re creating a two-tier Web3 ecosystem:

Tier 1: Infrastructure-Independent Builders

• Know DevOps and systems administration
• Can optimize costs by choosing right hardware
• Understand client software and networking
• Can debug node issues at 3am
• Control their own infrastructure destiny

Tier 2: Infrastructure-Dependent Builders

• Frontend/smart contract developers
• Rely on managed RPC providers
• Pay more for convenience
• Vulnerable to provider decisions
• Can’t fully realize decentralization vision

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: This division roughly tracks with existing privilege.

People who have time to learn DevOps, money to experiment with infrastructure, and job stability to take risks are more likely to be Tier 1.

People who are self-taught, working multiple jobs, from developing countries, or just focused on building products are stuck in Tier 2.

The Educational Gap Nobody Talks About

Brian said: “Spend one weekend setting up a node.”

What if I told you I tried that and failed?

The problem wasn’t lack of time or money. The problem was:

• Documentation assumes knowledge I don’t have

  • “Use systemd to manage the service” - What’s systemd?
  • “Open ports 30303 and 8545” - Why? Which protocol? How do I secure this?
  • “Ensure you have fast SSD” - How do I measure if mine is fast enough?

• Error messages are unhelpful

  • “sync failed” - Okay, but why? What do I do?
  • “peer connection refused” - Is this my fault? My ISP? The network?
  • “database corruption” - Do I start over? Can I recover?

• No clear learning path

  • Should I learn Geth first? Or Erigon? Or Nethermind?
  • What’s the difference between execution client and consensus client?
  • Do I need both? How do they communicate?

Compare this to learning React:

• Official tutorial that assumes no knowledge
• Clear error messages that tell you what’s wrong
• Huge community on Stack Overflow
• YouTube tutorials for every level
• Works on any computer, including my laptop

Running a blockchain node feels like going back to 2005 and manually configuring Apache.

It’s not that I’m lazy or unwilling to learn. It’s that the tooling and documentation assume expertise I don’t have, and there’s no clear path to acquire it.

What “Vercel For Nodes” Actually Needs To Be

Steve mentioned “Vercel for nodes” and I got excited. But let me be specific about what that actually means:

What Vercel does well:

1. git push deploys your app - Zero configuration
2. Automatic HTTPS, CDN, scaling - You don’t think about infrastructure
3. Clear pricing - $20/month for standard use
4. Great error messages - Actually tells you what’s wrong and how to fix it
5. One-click rollback - Mistakes are recoverable

What “Vercel for nodes” needs:

1. npx setup-node ethereum - Works on my laptop, then migrate to server later
2. Automatic management - Updates, monitoring, alerts handled for me
3. Clear pricing - “$X/month for Y chains”
4. Education built-in - Explains what it’s doing and why
5. Safety net - Can fall back to managed RPC if my node fails

The key insight: Vercel succeeded by making infrastructure invisible.

Not by making it cheaper (though it is), but by making it not require thinking about infrastructure at all.

My Actual Needs vs. What Exists

What I actually need:

• Ethereum node for my dApp
• Don’t care about fancy optimization
• Want it to just work
• Will pay reasonable price
• Need help when things break

What exists:

• Alchemy: Works perfectly, costs money, centralized
• Running own node: Cheap if optimized, requires expertise I don’t have
• Decentralized RPC: Middle ground, but adds complexity

What doesn’t exist:

• Managed node service that I control
• Educational resources assuming zero DevOps knowledge
• Node operation as a service with hand-holding

The Market Failure

Steve, you asked if node economics are broken. I think there’s a related market failure:

There’s no accessible path from “I’m a frontend dev using Alchemy” to “I run my own nodes.”

The jump is too big. It’s like going from using a car to building your own car. There needs to be something in between.

Some ideas:

• Node operation bootcamp - 2-day workshop teaching basics
• Managed nodes for developers - You control it, they operate it
• Progressive responsibility - Start with managed, gradually take over operations
• Mentorship programs - Experienced operators help newcomers

What Would Actually Help Me

If someone could create:

1. “Node Operation for Frontend Devs” course

   • Assumes zero infrastructure knowledge
   • Walks through every step with explanations
   • Teaches debugging common issues
   • Costs $200, saves me weeks of frustration

2. “Managed node with training wheels”

   • Provider sets it up, I watch and learn
   • They monitor, but I can access and understand
   • Gradual transition to self-operation
   • Costs $150/month, but I’m learning

3. “Emergency DevOps on-call”

   • I run my node normally
   • When I’m stuck, I can pay $50 for expert help
   • They fix it AND teach me what was wrong
   • Insurance policy for my learning curve

I would 100% pay for any of these.

The Uncomfortable Question

If Web3 is supposed to democratize finance and remove gatekeepers, but only people with DevOps expertise can truly participate in the infrastructure layer…

Have we just created different gatekeepers?

Not Visa and Mastercard, but Alchemy and Infura.

Not banks, but RPC providers.

Not financial privilege, but technical privilege.

I want to believe we can fix this with better education and tooling. But right now, the gap between “use centralized RPC” and “run your own nodes” is wider than most people acknowledge.

And until we bridge that gap, most developers (including me) will be stuck depending on infrastructure we don’t control.