This is a very interesting idea - subsidizing nodes. Thank you @marcio!
I’ll remember it and bring it up in future discussions on the topic.
It does create a problem of centralizing around DFINITY, but that’s the current situation anyway. So it doesn’t make it worse. I believe.
I’ve been thinking also about another idea that someone else brought up, which is an “SNS of node providers”, where anyone would be able to invest money and get a cut of the (reward) cake. And then there would be technical people who would actually run nodes and they would have to be strictly controlled for decentralization. That would IMO provide similar benefit since in real world there are people with cash but not technical expertise and there are people with technical expertise but no cash. On the IC we do expect the NPs to have both the cash and the technical skills. In reality, in most cases it’s either one or the other. Rarely do node providers have both.