Hi Solar, there are a couple of points I could maybe clarify here for you (I am from EOS UK Block Producer Candidate so we have asked a lot of similar questions).

The first point is that the 5% inflation is often incorrectly assumed to go to the 21 BP's but it does not all go to the 21 BPs.

It is split 3 ways.

It is split between the Worker Proposal Fund, the 21 BPs and the 100 Standby BPs.

Each Standy BP has to be able to take over at a moments notice and run a full read only node and to do this requires running a minimum of 10 dedicated machines, 4 full time staff, 2 x 15GB diversely routed connectivity, etc etc. The cost for running even the 121st standby Block Producer is well over 1M USD per annum.

This does not include any provision for the addition of the IPFS storage either which is still to be announced, and the network is going to have to scale massively once it goes live if it grows at an incredible rate as we all hope it will, once it is up and running.

Plus the security protection the nodes will require is going to be massive, as we expect that every hacker looking to make a name for themselves will be all over it looking for attack surfaces, especially during launch and the early days of the network, so you cannot under estimate costs for this equipment and skilled personal.

So in short it is going to be expensive to begin with, and more expensive as soon as it launches and then even more expensive as adoption grows! The good news though is that all BP candidates who are serious about doing a good job for the network (which we all are, because we're all EOS hodlers too!) are being transparent about their ownership and transparent about their plans and costs.

We intend to fully reinvest all Block Rewards into creating the most robust node humanly possible, for a long, long time, before we start diverting any profits into our community project (EOS University) and I am pretty sure all other BPs are of the same mind. We're finding the BP community, and the EOS community as a whole to be an amazing cross section of the global population who are all genuinely interested in doing the right thing for the good of the network and the good of humanity.

It's almost bizarre, but I think it comes with the territory, if you get as far as learning about EOS you have got there as a result of specific personal journeys that have peaked your interest in it enough to continue learning, and then you just like it more and more, the more you learn.

Anyway, I'm getting carried away now, I was only going to offer a couple of points but there we go! If I can help answer any other questions then please reach out to me.

We are very interested to know what questions the EOS hodler community want answered, because not only do we have to first launch the network on 3rd June 2018 to enable voting, we then have to get voted for!

So we think the best way to achieve this is to try and understand what the community wants to know the most, and then try to answer those questions as comprehensively and transparently as possible. So please, drown me in questions, everybody! :-)