They could still be funding it in other ways. It’s a conspiracy, but one that would make some sense.

I gather you are saying there still are real storage issues. The bigger your server grows the more wildly this can get out of hand once just one of your users joins a big room. The whole model is about distributing the syncing of messages & no matter how they slice it to speed parts of it up, I feel it will remain an issue by design unlike other protocols that treat realtime chat as ephemeral & just give you enough history to get context of the current conversation. I’ve already witnessed 3 servers try to grow a following, then when users came, the bill inevitable shut them down–in the same way that Mastodon can skyrocket bills due to fundamental designs. Other protocols also handle decentralization better in ways that don’t require massive funding & empower users to host their own decentralized server–to which I think is healthy & desirable.

Synapse more or less acts as a reference server in the way that all Twitter-likes are basically required to be Mastodon-compatible.