Fortunately I was in the top half of notaries this cycle, so my single node is safe for another year.
Erroneous to assume that I havent taken risk or have stake. I do have significant stake in KMD , and take the same risk with my votes as everyone else does. I follow the notarynode channel and participate in the discussions on scaling komodo, and was a testnet operator and do know how to keep my node updated ( Just not that proficient ). Having someone more experienced manage my node, doesn't mean that I can slack on knowing what is going on.
From my perspective, a few veteran network admins / cybersecurity experts can maintain all the notary nodes if necessary. Having a decent variety of node operators distributed across the world, with unique perspectives and skillsets is necessary, however its easier ensure that all the nodes are updated and maintained when you have to wrangle up a number of operators that is less than the maximum. A happy middle I think can be obtained, if it appears to be too centralized for peoples taste then they will vote for unique operators.
The issue with security that concerns me is from political bickerings rather than on the tech side. Currently this is not an issue with Komodo, but as we have seen in other coins ( Bitcoin/Ethereum) politics can make even simple solutions arduous tasks.
I don't begrudge early adopters getting rewarded for joining crypto projects before they took off (but I do feel envious). You used your time wisely to stay informed about what was going on in the early stages, and you had good community reputation to get elected, but I disagree that you actually took on much 'risk'. That's not to say you don't have a large stake in kmd too, but unless you're a mega whale who got in on your own votes only, your risk was only proportional to your personal stake, e.g if 10% of your vote quota came from yourself, then your 'stake' risk was 10%, and the other 90% stake risk came from those who voted for you.
It's nobodies business what your stake is, and maybe your personal vote did put you over the line, but your personal 'risk' was only proportional to your own stake.
I see a big difference with other coins like DASH or STRATIS that have similar monopoly restrictions on masternodes etc, as in those cases to get a privileged node with extra earning potential you need to upfront a lot of coins, well over 1mil USD now for STRATIS. I see a clear difference in the risk/reward calculation for KMD and those other coins, and for other PoS coins where earnings are 100% correlated with the size of your stake.
I actually think the KMD system is better than those other coins, because it gives active people with no funds a chance to get involved - convert enthisiasm, time, talent - into coins. You can't do that in other communities, but you can in Komodo, and looks like that might be what you did so far. Other guys maybe not, possible a few guys slipped through last election who do very little for komodo, but still get a great risk free monthly bonus, especially the ones paying other guys to run their nodes. Hopefully the election process reveals who those guys are (if they exist), and the community votes them out in favor of productive people and/or spreads the profits to KMD holders through pools.
@BigNaturals Good Luck next election if you decide to run!
I'll definitely consider running, but I'm not a linux user, so would have to hire someone now, have the node up and running in case I won, and then get elected. There's some significant risk there for a small player like me, the node cost is certain, but getting elected is definitely not. If it was possible to get elected, and then have a grace period to organise the node then yes, I will run, but if not, then I will hope to join a pool with my KMD. I do like the idea that some notary profits should go to KMD holders, that would add dividends to the KMD mix, and that would increase value of KMD.