This reminds me of the exact same discussion we had around the IBP Bounty cost model. Back then, the operating costs were calculated using AWS pricing, yet almost none of the operators were actually running on AWS. They were using other providers that were just as reliable but significantly cheaper.
I see the same issue here. Unless you’re running archive nodes, I don’t understand where the storage concern comes from. Community reports consistently place a ParityDB database with pruning enabled at around 200–400 GB, even after long periods of operation. That’s nowhere near requiring a dedicated server for a single Kusama validator.
I can confidently say that a single server with 64 GB RAM and 2 TB of NVMe storage can comfortably run 3 or 4 pruned Kusama validator nodes.
So no, I don’t think these infrastructure costs justify the 50% or even 85% commissions charged by some operators. It feels like some are trying to convince nominators that running a validator is far more expensive than it actually is.
There’s nothing wrong with earning a fair profit, but charging excessive commissions while portraying validator operations as prohibitively expensive is misleading. Nominators should do their own research and remember that there are many experienced, reliable operators providing the exact same service for 15% commission.