(JaiChai) - "Opportunity Costs"
Running Validator Nodes and ASICs in the past, I can honestly say that (for me) maintaining them was not what I envisioned being "happily retired" was.
After a couple years of serving as a validator node for a couple of different projects and listening to the loud lawn mower sound of two Bitmain Z11 Ant Miners in my living room, I eventually grew tired of it all.
I resented having to keep an eagle eye on everything 24/7 and dealing with mysterious ISP and home internet issues, frequent power outages, recharging redundant electricity sources, low-end MTBF and replacing hardware way too often, etc.
You get the picture.
The thrill of learning new stuff and building systems was gone. Only the headache-inducing chores remained.
Finally I decided to stop.
The opportunity costs (the time that I could've spent on other, fun things) was just too great for me to continue those activities.
These days I gravitate more toward investing in stake pools, delegating my HIVE and Steemit power to Validators (witnesses), buying hash rate contracts, DeFi yield farming, etc.
In short, although I could probably do the work myself, I choose to simply pay others to do it - while I collect nominal ROI.
That said, after I buy another desktop or two, I may rent out extra storage capacity to projects like IPFS, FileCoin, Sia, Storj and Swarm.
I think watching my desktop running as my "maintenance check" for earning decentralized storage tokens would be something I'd be perfectly suited for.
In lak'ech, JaiChai.
JaiChai 3-31-2021. Simultaneous multi-site submissions posted. All rights reserved.