So I live in like a rural area. It was not that long ago there was finally any way to get internet out here. Problem is it is a metered connection. It doesn’t seem very likely I would be able to profit if I need to keep that cooking all day. I know right now we don’t have all the info on what the laws of that universe are, so it is hard to really predict anythings trajectory for sure. And I mean you could say I am kinda a super edge case. Most people live in cities with unlimited internet… but even so that ain’t free. I imagine if you are running a lot of nodes you would actually need a separate or upgraded bandwidth for that and can’t be like this is something I have anyways and was kinda wasting before. And that might not be the only factor that limits some people’s ability to participate. Just the one most apparent to me.
In any case I am sure this will somewhat “work itself out” as people price in their particular costs of contributing resources to the network. Every one won’t have the same price though. And if yours is not competitive ….well not that you totally can’t play at all, but its not a means to finical gain anymore.
I guess there is a more fundamental question here: is farming only going to be profitable in very specific geographical regions or classes of people? I know they love to mine bitcoin in Iceland cause of the cheap electricity and ambient cool temperatures. That hasn’t killed mining elsewhere though. I think it really comes down to how competitive it gets. If competition is high and margins are small, then only those lucky enough to find themselves in the right place will be able to profit.
We can say oh well too bad for those that can’t participate… we only really want the most economical nodes in the network. I think that is short sighted though…I think anything that lowers decentralization hurts us all. If all the farms are in Iceland and the government there suddenly decides that is illegal we might not be able to prevent data loss when they all turn off at once.
