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Thanks @timcliff for the reply, and I appreciate you taking the time to make sense of things for us not as technical folk.

So it's not the fact that it's a full node that has the huge price tag associated, it's the amount of traffic I guess being witnessed by that node?

If so, do you have any idea what the scale is of what Steemit is handling so that the community can come to grips with, as accurately as we can, what the cost associated with dealing with our current traffic level is?

I think it would be a great thing to get into the public consciousness of the community exactly what the needs are, so that we can, as a community, take some actionable steps toward solving our common problems.

Although I know enough to "do the job", I don't really consider myself an expert on server architecture. I know Steemit is paying around $2M USD per year right now. I also know there are cheaper options out there, but I don't know exactly how much room there is to save and offer the same level of service.

Thanks so much for the info!