💰Operational Costs / Monthly Expenses

Transparency & Monthly Operating Costs

We believe in radical transparency. Here is the full breakdown of our expected monthly operating costs required to run the NICS Metaverse, including infrastructure, Web3, login/authentication, AI tools, research, and hardware.

Supporters of our project can help us cover these expenses either with monthly subscriptions via Stripe or one-time contributions via PayPal or Coinbase Commerce.

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💻 Infrastructure (Microsoft Azure)

Category	Service / Description	Monthly Cost (USD)	Support
Main Compute	Azure NVadsA10 v5 VM (2× NVIDIA A10 GPU, 24 vCPU, 220 GB RAM) – Unity Metaverse rendering	$2,800	Support
Staging Compute	Azure D32as v5 VM (32 vCPU, 128 GB RAM, CPU-only, for dev/staging)	$1,200	Support
Database	Azure Cosmos DB (global scale, 1TB storage + requests)	$400	Support
Storage	Azure Blob Storage + CDN (assets, textures, Unity bundles)	$250	Support
Networking	Azure Bandwidth + Load Balancer	$200	Support
Monitoring & Logs	Azure Monitor & Application Insights	$100	Support
Domain & Hosting	nics.space + cPanel hosting	$30	Support
Total (Infrastructure)		$4,980	Support Infra Total

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🌐 Web3 & Authentication

Category	Service / Description	Monthly Cost (USD)	Support
Web3 Infra	Alchemy / Infura RPC (ETH & Polygon nodes)	$200	Support
Wallet Integration	Web3Modal / RainbowKit (enterprise tier)	$100	Support
Auth / Social Login	Microsoft Entra ID B2C / Auth0 (10k MAU)	$150	Support
Total (Web3 & Auth)		$450	Support Web3 Total

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🤖 AI & Tools

Category	Service / Description	Monthly Cost (USD)	Support
AI Tools	ChatGPT Premium	$24	Support
AI Tools	Claude / Anthropic API credits	€100	Support
Automation	n8n Cloud (workflow automation)	€50	Support
Dev Tools	GitHub Pro + Actions CI/CD	€40	Support
Collaboration	Slack / Discord Nitro + integrations	€30	Support
Total (AI & Tools)		€240	Support AI Total

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📚 Education & Research

Category	Service / Description	Monthly Cost (USD)	Support
Online Courses	Coursera Team Subscription	$60	Support
Research	Academic Journals & Data APIs	$40	Support
Total (Education & Research)		$100	Support Edu Total

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🖥 Hardware (One-Time, amortized)

Category	Service / Description	Cost (USD)	Amortized Monthly (USD)	Support
Developer Hardware	Apple MacBook Pro (M4 Max, 16-core CPU/40-core GPU, 128GB RAM, 1TB SSD)	€4000	~€180	Support
VR Testing	Meta Quest 3 Pro + accessories	€1,200	~€50	Support
Mac Studio M3 Ultra	32-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 512 GB RAM, 16 TB SSD	€4,529	~€160	Support
Servers (local dev)	Mini-cluster for testing	€4,000	~€120	Support
Total (Hardware)		€13,729	€510	Support HW Total

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🌍 Summary

Category	Monthly Cost (USD)
Infrastructure	$4,980
Web3 & Auth	$450
AI & Tools	€240
Education	$100
Hardware	€13729
Total Monthly Operating Costs	$21,886

Support Hardware + Full Monthly Operating Cost ($21,866)

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🙌 Support the Project

Every contribution directly supports the growth of our metaverse ecosystem. Choose your preferred way to contribute:

• 💳 Monthly subscription via Stripe → Subscribe on Stripe

• 🅿️ One-time support via PayPal → PayPal.me/StellarExplorer

• 🪙 One-time crypto contribution via Coinbase Commerce → Support with Crypto

Thank you for being part of our journey. Together we are building the future of the decentralized metaverse. 🌍✨