Andre Cronje: Sonic spent $35.6 million last year, with R&D, ecology, and legal compliance accounting for the majority

Sonic Labs co-founder Andre Cronje said in an article on X: "For all L2 or application chains, the real cost of running a blockchain (even if it is semi-successful) is: The upfront cost of oracle and stablecoin is $7.5 million, and $3.5 million per year; The upfront cost of RPC, index, and dashboards is $200,000, and $700,000 per year; VRF, Keeper, wallet support, governance are $500,000 per year; Explorer, custody, risk management are $800,000 per year, a total of $13.2 million. The above applies only to Sonic. Here is our cost last year: R&D $10.9 million; Ecosystem $10.7 million; Legal $4.1 million; Compliance $3.8 million; Infrastructure $2.4 million; Marketing $1.4 million; Bounty $1.2 million; Sponsorship $400,000; Media $350,000; Regulation $200,000; Activities $10 $35.6 million; total cost is $35.6 million. This does not include the exchange launch expenses, which fortunately we do not need to do this year.”