No, Solana does not require 1 Million USD to break even.

This is the second time I'm posting this, first one got removed because of 3 SOL posts in the Hot section.

I've seen quite a few posts with this misinformation being spread.

Solana is Centralized, Yes.

It requires costly hardware to run, Yes.

You need 80000$ to run it in one year, NO

That is not how a Validator works. A Validator is analogous to a landlord, the landlord owns the property but he/she has tenants that pay the rent, through which the landlord survives.

The Validator node has people staking their sol. As you may know Validators require 1.1 Sol a day to operate. As a Validator you don't have to pay this from your pocket.

People who stake with you, earn ~8% interest, you levy a fee on that interest and that fee is used to pay for the Validator expenses.

Essentially, more the stakers with more the SOL, the more fees you can collect and hence more the profit of the Validator.

This also enforces Decentralisation, if any validator does some monkey business, people can de stake, essentially removing their SOL from the Validator which means the Validator node will have a lesser profit (could even meet a loss) which de-incentivizes any fishy practises.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

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