However don't offer financial reward to their owners. I think it is for this reason that people are disinterested in running one.
in my opinion if anyone has higher than 1 bitcoin and is not running a full node then they have never understood what bitcoin is. you don't run a node to make money you run a node because you are using a decentralized network and a decentralized network will only work as well as its users.
It has been a hobby of mine for the past 3 months to make nodes and develop incentives.
what are those incentives?!!
The nodes I run feature:
- Full Bitcoin node
- 3.5" LCD touchscreen display to display bitcoin price/network stats
- Broadcast over the Tor network, (a configurable option)
- Generate cool personalized vanity addresses
- Sync my desktop wallet to my node for instant wallet availability on unlock
Multiple webpages can be displayed in a scrolling mode, eg. Network stats, Bitcoin price, News, Weather, traffic updates for your commute (google maps) or anything to brighten up my desk, pictures etc
none of these are features of a "node".
tell us the system specs (CPU,RAM, storage, network speed and traffic it uses,...)
all the things you listed are done with other stuff with a couple of lines of code.
if these are your incentives then i think you were doing it wrong.
+1
Full node operators are the ones who keep bitcoins decentralization intact and keep in check the malicious miners. They are the enforcers. I do agree, people who have resources should run full nodes, no incentive, but bitcoin ain't banks printing out notes, if you have invested in a decentralized currency then you are liable to work towards that decentralization at least for the sake of what you have invested.
As far as incentives, if a miner is running a full node then obviously incentive. I don't know how stand alone node operators get
incentivized, they are doing a service, free-of-cost.
Basic requirements to run a node:
Desktop or laptop hardware running recent versions of Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.
145 gigabytes of free disk space
2 gigabytes of memory (RAM)
A broadband Internet connection with upload speeds of at least 400 kilobits (50 kilobytes) per second
An unmetered connection, a connection with high upload limits, or a connection you regularly monitor to ensure it doesn’t exceed its upload limits. It’s common for full nodes on high-speed connections to use 200 gigabytes upload or more a month. Download usage is around 20 gigabytes a month, plus around an additional 140 gigabytes the first time you start your node.
6 hours a day that your full node can be left running. (You can do other things with your computer while running a full node.) More hours would be better, and best of all would be if you can run your node continuously.
https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node#minimum-requirementsAs far as OP what's missing is lack of understanding how bitcoin works. Most of the recent investors and future investors would just dive in for the sake of speculation, profits and not at all bothering about how the foundation works.
If you have a PC lying here and there, connect it and contribute to the decentralization of bitcoin in a selfless manner.