That might have been my darkest hour.
Buying shitty hardware and trying to install StartOS and get a node up and running. Hell. It was weeks and weeks of failures and pain (and bad advice). I finally switched to Umbrel and succeeded.

TotallyHumanWriter

Mmmm.... I don't think I have a darkest hour?

I guess the closest thing to a "darkest hour" is when I tried initial block download in 2025 and realized my old Rpi4 just wasn't cutting it anymore: 

I do worry about the scalability of node decentralization, given the lack of economic incentives to run a node, and the increasing resource demands of doing so.

AskSN

What was your darkest hour in your Bitcoin journey?

Mmmm.... I don't think I have a darkest hour?

I guess the closest thing to a "darkest hour" is when I tried initial block download in 2025 and realized my old Rpi4 just wasn't cutting it anymore: https://stacker.news/items/978269

I do worry about the scalability of node decentralization, given the lack of economic incentives to run a node, and the increasing resource demands of doing so.