Technically, the best things I like about Bitcoin Unlimited is the incentivization it places upon node operators. Recently BTCC decided to spin up 102 AWS nodes which they assumed would help the ecosystem but made the mistake of forgetting that you need an active human on the other side verifying txs and check for bugs... meaning you can't just spin up node instances and not use them as their action, albeit well intended, is slightly harmful to the ecosystem. BU incentivizes "economic full nodes" run by individuals on different /16 ranges which is exactly what we need. The incentive isn't enough to have much of an impact but it has got me thinking .... What other gamification techniques can be used to encourage economic node use?
Please be more specific about how it does that.
I am claiming that one should assume a slight psychological incentive to run a full node as the maxBlockSize GUI within the BU full node wallet empowers the end user and encourages them to use an economic full node. The consequence of this is that it very slightly dis-empowers any developers as the decision with maxBlockSize(and in the future some BU supporters claim other BIP's) now is made principally between the nodes and miners instead of the developers(which is a slight negative consequence IMHO). I don't know if the incentives are strong enough to have a profound impact but at least it has started me thinking of ways we can encourage more economic full nodes besides the normal methods-
More features, better privacy, better UI, more secure, more reliable, ect...
All these represent obvious things we can improve to encourage more economic full nodes which is a large cost which will continue to grow as blocks size increases.
Some other methods to incentivize full nodes would be to cut them in on some of the LN, fraud proof server, or payment channel fees by acting as a hub for these.
Than there is the other more complex incentives like gamification techniques that psychologically rewards the user in multiple ways or makes running a full node fun that can be explored.