Building for Scale: The Real Cost of Blockchain Infrastructure

Building for Scale: The Real Cost of Blockchain Infrastructure

Part 1 of 3 in our blockchain infrastructure series

Blockchain networks never close. They settle value around the clock, across every time zone, with no pause for weekends. That always-on promise rests on something very physical: servers in real data centers.

The infrastructure behind your validators, RPC nodes, and sequencers shapes your rewards, your security posture, and your monthly bill. The right foundation turns infrastructure from a cost center into a competitive advantage.

Timing shows the stakes clearly. Ethereum® gives validators a 12-second slot for attestation. Solana® targets just 400 milliseconds. Dedicated hardware helps you hit those windows consistently, and every on-time attestation adds to your rewards.

We work every day with validator operators, rollup teams, custody providers, and blockchain architects. The same questions come up again and again. This three-part series answers them with real numbers and proven customer architectures:

This first post builds on three pillars: cost you can predict, performance you can isolate, and residency you can defend.

What production Web3 demands

Production-scale Web3 places four demands on infrastructure:

  • Timing precision. Tight slot windows reward consistent performance, not just strong averages.
  • Bandwidth. Validators use a few terabytes a month. A busy public RPC endpoint can push 50 TB or more.
  • Isolation. Validators hold signing keys, and sequencers run ordering logic and MEV. Both belong on hardware you control.
  • Cost predictability. Treasury reviews, board meetings, and IPO prep all call for a bill you can forecast.

The egress math

Let’s put a number on bandwidth. Picture a public RPC endpoint moving 50 TB a month. That’s a realistic load for a node serving live query traffic.

At Amazon Web Services (AWS®) list pricing for U.S. East, as of October 2026, internet egress costs 9 cents per GB for the first 10 TB and 8.5 cents from 10 TB to 50 TB. The total comes to about $4,300 a month, or $51,600 a year. That covers data transfer alone, before a single compute instance. NAT Gateway processing at 4.5 cents per GB and cross-AZ transfer push the real bill higher still.

On OVHcloud bare metal in the U.S., that line item is zero. Bandwidth is unmetered and included. Your port speed sets the limit, not the gigabytes you move.

Bware Labs® knew this firsthand. The team built Blast®, its multichain blockchain API platform, on OVHcloud Advance dedicated servers. Their CEO named flat-fee networking as a key reason to leave a hyperscaler VPS. When Alchemy® acquired Bware Labs in 2024, both companies were already running on OVHcloud bare metal.

Why dedicated hardware wins

Bare metal delivers more than raw speed. For validators and sequencers, three benefits stand out:

  • Consistent timing. Inside Ethereum’s 12-second slot, a validator must attest within the first four seconds. On a shared VM, the hypervisor schedules CPU time around other tenants. That creates jitter, small delays that raise the odds of a missed duty. Bare metal removes the scheduling layer, so timing stays steady.
  • True isolation. Your CPU cores, NVMe storage, and network belong to you alone. You get no contention pool and no hypervisor overhead. Performance stays predictable on your busiest days.
  • Stronger attestation economics. Consistent hardware means fewer missed slots, and every on-time attestation earns ETH. Across a large validator set, steady hardware becomes measurable yield. Reliable infrastructure is a revenue driver, not just a cost line.

EthStaker®, the non-profit behind much of Ethereum’s solo-staking community, sees these gains today. The team moved validators to OVHcloud dedicated servers across multiple regions. EthStaker now has faster syncing and steadier nodes while keeping the decentralization it values.

Hardware that fits the workload

OVHcloud Scale servers meet or exceed recommended validator specs for both Ethereum and Solana:

  • CPU: Ethereum runs comfortably on 4 to 8 cores. A Solana validator needs 12+ cores at a 2.8 GHz or faster base clock, and an RPC node needs 16+. OVHcloud Scale-a1 and Scale-a2 servers run 16 and 24 AMD® EPYC® Genoa cores, respectively.
  • Memory: Ethereum needs about 32 GB for a combined client setup. A Solana validator needs 256 GB, and an RPC node with full account indexes needs 512 GB. OVHcloud Scale server configurations reach 1 TB.
  • Storage: Both chains call for NVMe, which ships standard on OVHcloud Scale servers.
  • Network: Ethereum needs 10 to 25 Mbps sustained, and a staked Solana validator needs at least 2 Gbps, with 10 Gbps recommended. OVHcloud Scale servers deliver 5 Gbps of dedicated, unmetered bandwidth in the U.S., EU, and Canada.

That covers Ethereum with room to spare and clears Solana's minimum, with bandwidth upgrades available for high-stake validators. And two features set OVHcloud apart from most hyperscalers: egress is included, and anti-DDoS protection is on by default.

That covers Ethereum with room to spare and clears Solana’s minimum, with bandwidth upgrades available for high-stake validators. And two features come standard: egress is included, and anti-DDoS protection is on by default.

Anti-DDoS protection, built in

Validator downtime has three main sources: infrastructure failure, DDoS attacks, and human error. Dedicated bare metal addresses the first. Built-in protection handles the second. Part 2 tackles the third with HA design and failover runbooks.

Validator and RPC endpoints are public and valuable, which makes them attractive targets. Every OVHcloud server includes OVHcloud Anti-DDoS Protection (VAC) from the moment it’s provisioned. It requires no add-on, no extra charge, and no configuration.

Our VAC runs in two modes. Automatic mode monitors every IP and starts scrubbing within seconds of an attack. Permanent mode keeps scrubbing active on the IPs you choose. Multi-terabit capacity across our global backbone absorbs attacks at the edge. Your legitimate traffic keeps flowing, and your validator keeps attesting.

Stakely® relies on this protection every day. The company stakes across 40+ networks with more than $700 million in total value locked. OVHcloud Anti-DDoS Protection has proven to mitigate attacks up to 1.3 Tbps, and is a key safeguard against transaction-flooding attacks. Stakely runs sentry nodes on OVHcloud Advance dedicated servers and signer nodes on OVHcloud Public Cloud instances. OVHcloud vRack connects them over a private network isolated from the internet.

A production architecture that holds up

Here’s a reference production stack. Chain traffic passes through VAC before it reaches your nodes. A primary node runs validator and execution clients on dedicated bare metal. A secondary node in another region handles standby beacon and RPC duties. OVHcloud vRack links the two over a private network with no egress fees.

Everstake® proves this model at scale. The company runs validators on 80+ networks, with over a million delegators and more than $7 billion staked. It maintains a 99.98% uptime rate. OVHcloud Bare Metal servers handle validation and snapshots, while OVHcloud VPS handles monitoring and orchestration. Hot-swap validators in OVHcloud data centers activate automatically during upgrades or outages with safeguards against double-signing. Everstake cut its provider count by more than half, and its CIO highlights rapid provisioning times.

The business case: one less line item

For finance teams, the story is simple. The savings don't depend on cheaper compute. The savings come from an entire cost category that disappears – traffic – worth $50,000 to $84,000 a year. Outbound, inter-data-center, and private network (OVHcloud vRack) traffic are all included. Your bill shows the same number every month.

Alchemy’s story shows this math at the largest scale. The company powers around 70% of top Ethereum applications, including MetaMask® and OpenSea®. It also handles more than 10 billion API requests a day. After moving core workloads to OVHcloud bare metal, Alchemy published 50 to 55% infrastructure savings. The company also reported zero egress fees and 2 to 4x performance gains across regions.

Compliance and residency, ready for review

For custody, fintech, and institutional workloads, reviewers ask for certifications before they discuss architecture. We hold audited SOC 1, 2, and 3 reports, plus ISO 27001, 27017, and 27018. PCI DSS covers payment-card environments, and HIPAA-eligible configurations support health-adjacent work.

HSM availability often unlocks custody approvals. It provides hardware-protected keys, audited access, and a documented chain of custody. Certification scope varies by product and region, so confirm the details with your OVHcloud solutions architect.

Residency is refreshingly simple. We run data centers across North America and Europe, and you choose the region when you provision. Your data lives where your regulations, customers, or latency targets require.

What’s next in the series

Part 1 makes the case for dedicated hardware beneath blockchain workloads. Part 2, Architecting for Resilience, moves from why to how. It covers multi-region HA, validator HA that avoids double-signing, and hybrid sequencer designs. It also tackles the hardest part of any move: proving performance, sync times, and failover without disrupting production.

Part 3, Beyond the Node, explores confidential compute for custody and ZK proof systems, plus GPU and AI-native workloads. Intel® SGX and AMD SEV-SNP keep data protected even while it’s being processed. Secretarium® already runs its Klave® confidential computing platform on OVHcloud Advance dedicated servers with SGX enclaves.

Get started today

Run the numbers on your own stack. Pull up your latest cloud invoice and find three lines: data transfer out, NAT Gateway, and inter-region or cross-AZ transfer. Add them up and compare the total to your compute costs.

Then put OVHcloud to the test. We set up a proof of concept on bare metal with your actual validator or rollup stack. There's no production commitment, and your OVHcloud team scopes it with you. Visit us to explore infrastructure built for blockchain.

Trademark notice: Amazon Web Services and AWS are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Ethereum is a trademark of Stiftung Ethereum (the Ethereum Foundation). Solana is a trademark of the Solana Foundation. Alchemy is a trademark of Alchemy Insights, Inc. Bware Labs and Blast are trademarks of their respective owner. EthStaker is a trademark of its respective owner. Stakely is a trademark of its respective owner. Everstake is a trademark of its respective owner. MetaMask is a trademark of Consensys Software Inc. OpenSea is a trademark of Ozone Networks, Inc. Intel is a trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. AMD and EPYC are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Secretarium and Klave are trademarks of Secretarium Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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