[TimJRobinson]

Yea the costs are the tokens it pays to validators. I'm not sure what you don't understand about that. Ethereum the network takes payment for transactions, and pays validators for validating. It is profitable because it currently takes more payments for transactions than it pays to validators. All of this is on the sites I mentioned.

How could validators possibly be revenue? Maybe it helps if you visualize them as contractors who do a job for the Ethereum network, and get paid for that. How the contractor manages their own budget is irrelevant to Ethereum.

[lottin]

Good heavens. The contractors are the network. If you leave the contractors out there's nothing left. There's no network. The network doesn't take payments. Contractors do. Other than that of contractors, there is no economic activity. In this view, the network is neither profitable nor unprofitable, since the entire concept of 'profitability' refers to an economic activity.