The Recurring Cycle of Node and Narrative Hype in Crypto

It is quite common to see messages such as: "Why are you setting up nodes if everything is just a pump? Nodes are a dead narrative," and I partly agree with this. Let me explain in simple terms. Remember in summer 2024, after the drops of Sei, ZKsync, L0, Scroll, many shouted that retrohunting was dead, it was too late to start; the drops were no longer significant. Yet, we ended up with substantial drops from Movement, Plume, Initia, Hyperliquid, Story Protocol, a fifth drop from Optimism, Walrus, and other tier-1/2 projects. People then changed their minds again. We all see the metrics of each tier-1/2 project, with participants ranging from 3 to 300 million accounts. If retrohunting didn't bring profit, where would such a large number of participants come from? Similar situation occurred with nodes: from early 2023 to May 2024, almost no project distributed rewards, but then io.net, Taiko, Grass, Nodepay, Chasm distributed generously. Many rushed into the node narrative out of FOMO, quickly "killing" the topic. Recently, Nillion distributed very tasty rewards, mostly to those already involved in nodes, who had experience or cases, and were ready to jump on the train. I managed to do it, as did many of my colleagues who have long been in nodes. The same pattern repeats with every narrative. Today or tomorrow it seems dead, and you forget about it. But over time, the community leaves, and suddenly Taiko 2.0 or Aptos 2.0 appears, offering generous drops. Everyone rushes to set up thousands of nodes again. After a few months, questions arise: "Where is the profit?" "Nodes don't feed us," and everyone leaves again. The cycle continues.