Earning passive income by running blockchain nodes
Operating a blockchain node is often misunderstood as crypto mining. Mining is also a similar concept but running a node for a blockchain is not the same as mining cryptocurrencies. This is a very big topic to discuss because there are so many opportunities available to generate passive income by running blockchain nodes. In this article, we are going to see 3 different types of ways to generate income by running validator blockchain nodes.
Participating in the validator node pool
Some blockchains like Ethereum one of the biggest blockchains and it is very costly to run a full node there. They have a staking protocol that demands 32 ETH to run the node and participate in validation. 32 ETH is not an easy thing and it is very costly. That's one of the reasons why people prefer joining a staking pool where a part of our ETH alone can generate some passive income for us instead of participating with a full 32 ETH. Another reason is that not everyone can afford 32 ETH because it is very costly to have so much ETH and at the same time they may not have enough knowledge to run a validator node. Participating in a pool would let them earn passive income for participating in the form of a reward share.
Running a validator node for a testnet
Running a validator node for a testnet is usually for a project that is just emerging. Those projects look for public participators who can run a node to test the codebase in the testnet so that before they launch the mainnet they can avoid all the errors or issues with the node. In this process, people generate income by participating early in the game. Many chains offer incentives in the form of airdrops and tokens to the node validators and people who operate a testnet. The value of the tokens given during the testnet stage may not be worth much but as soon as the mainnet goes live, the value of the tokens will start increasing and that will provide a great income to the investors who operate a testnet. If they have a good reputation running a testnet they can easily convert it to mainnet and get votes from others to earn more income too.
Running a full node for a mainnet
Running a full node on a popular blockchain is highly rewarding. Based on the skills of individuals people pick the top node operators. Some of the blockchains operate based on the stake voting to pick the nodes that would be rewarded. Running a full node for a mainnet has so many advantages as well as disadvantages. One of the biggest advantages is that a passive income is generated for just operating a node. The biggest disadvantage is that there will be heavy competition and people will have to invest a lot of money to get an attractive spot to get more income. Even otherwise they have to befriend other big guys to attract votes and stay on the top for more rewards.