I've been thinking lately about node running and specifically as it relates to mining. It's dawning on me that not just running a node is important, but getting your node 'off zero' economically is probably more important for robust resistance to various network attack vectors. There seem to be two ways your node can be economically relevant in the bitcoin ecosystem:

Now, I do run a lightning node against my bitcoin node. I use it for commerce, zapping, etc. I also am using JAM on earn mode to add mixing liquidity.

But, I've been thinking specifically about my node's economic relevance when it comes to mining. I currently run 4 machines: 2 bitaxes at about 1.5 TH/s, and 2 gen 2 futurebits at about 4 TH/s. I am running them all through DATUM using my own node, and have been doing so for about a year now. I am giving myself the goal of trying to outpace the difficulty increase in 12 month windows. So, looking back in the last 12 months, difficulty has gone from 95.67 T to 150.84 T. That is a 57.89% increase over that time frame. So, in order for my little itty bitty economic node to outpace the network difficulty over the last 12 months, I need to increase my 5.5 TH/s by over 57.89%. That would be more than 9.5 TH/s. So, in order to do so I think I will get one of these avalon nano S (https://altairtech.io/product/canaan-avalon-nano-3s/) which would add 6 TH/s to my current fleet to put in my living room just as the cold season starts, which will increase my economic node mining by 109%, far outpacing the network's difficulty growth!

Mining is not just about the network power you retain via your little node, but it's also about the power you take away from all the other nodes. Many plebs in concert can take much power from Foundry / Antpool Mafia and make their lives / profits harder. Anyways them's my thoughts