SYNC development is absolutely tied to the PARETO project and if product market fit is not achieved then it will be one of the failed ventures.

I have several wins in the blockchain space and in business ventures and several losses. Some losses become wins in the future.

For SYNC I'm not sure if people really need to keep active connections right now, since there are several ways to do a token swap, one of which doesn't require a blockchain transaction. Other ways could involve people running the client at a future date to create new connections. If you must run it, just use a low resource computer, maybe even like a Raspberry Pi