Operational Costs
The operating cost represents the set of resources required for The Corporate Wars to function continuously, both in its deployment on the Solana network and in the technical infrastructure that supports it off-chain.
At the blockchain level, it includes maintaining active accounts and programs, paying rent proportional to state size, and the fees for each operation executed, whether by players or internal system processes.
But beyond the Solana network, the system requires a permanent technical base: cloud servers, databases, auxiliary storage, authentication services, web servers, APIs, event processing, orchestration tools, monitoring, security, backups, and more.
Without this operational layer, the universe would not be accessible, stable, or functional.
Economic Reality
Websites, identity services, databases —everything can be free as long as you're the only user, but once you need to serve users, even a few, free subscriptions can't handle a fraction of the incoming traffic, creating bottlenecks and network failures.
Game servers require low-latency responsiveness for thousands of users —hopefully— who expect perfect system operation. This implies orchestration and replication to prevent downtime, geographic redirection hubs, and a progressive increase in services integrated into the system.
Even with precise automation mechanisms, there is no standard miracle method that completely frees a system from human maintenance and oversight; administration and technical support will be necessary to guarantee service quality.
Therefore, a real AAA system also requires a real human team, who should be gratefully compensated for their invaluable contributions and services.
The 'Damn Rent'
Unlike other blockchains where costs are paid once at deployment, in Solana each account must maintain a minimum amount of SOL as a —deposit— (rent) proportional to its size, or it will be automatically deleted from the network.
If the deposit covers 2 years of rent, the account is considered rent-exempt and is not removed.
For each account on Solana —whether user, program, PDA, or data account— rent must be deposited, proportional to the number of occupied bytes. The larger the state, the higher the deposit.
There is also controlled account closure, which allows recovering the rent; but this mechanism must be implemented in each program explicitly.
This becomes especially relevant in a system like The Corporate Wars, where we intend to deploy complex information structures: planets, sectors, trade routes, corporate holdings...
Unoptimized storage can cost 0.3 SOL per star system or more, making scaling to a galactic sector or a network of 11,000 worlds unfeasible without a solid deployment plan.
All these elements have a real and sustained cost, which must be regularly covered.
The Treasury is designed to continuously support this structural expense, channeling part of the received funds into infrastructure maintenance and general operations.
If the universe keeps running when no one is playing, it's because there's a real system keeping it on.
Simulated Recession
In Long Night scenarios, whether total or partial, disconnected planetary systems stop operating actively: the PDAs associated with those worlds can be closed in a controlled manner, recovering the corresponding rent and freeing technical resources.
This capacity for economic and technical retreat allows the universe to degrade without collapsing: abandoned routes shut down, systems fall silent, and only traces remain in the lore and the block history.
When a new Allegiance regains control or a region is reactivated, the same worlds and routes can be recreated from the same PDA derivation, restoring their logical and narrative identity even if the previous state was dismantled.
This mechanism allows the structural memory of the universe to persist even when the data has been wiped: same key, new cycle —another milieu.
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