As things stand, I have signed around 85 blocks and received a reward of 0.434 SPS each. I received my first transaction on 07.03.2025 at 19:00:24 and since then I have just signed 85 blocks - at the beginning of the records my validation node was in the overall ranking of validators at place 48 - which means that I receive significantly fewer blocks to sign than someone who is at the top of the rankings. After at least a few people from our guild voted for my validation node, my validator node was able to slide up to 29th place, which in turn means that I effectively get a block to sign more often and accordingly receive 0.434 SPS as a reward more often. Unfortunately, the support of the SPS whales who vote for my validator node 
My node now receives about 42 hours of rewards, but how much is that currently and is it enough to cover the costs I have to pay monthly so that I don't have to pay extra for decentralization? Let's just do the calculation with ChatGPT, because it's faster and more effective at math than I am. I'll put the current USD value after the rewards so that it's easier to understand. So, in 42 hours I signed 85 blocks and received 36.89 SPS (0.224 USD) as rewards. This results in the following values:
These rewards are simply for being part of the system with purchased hardware. So practically speaking, thank you for providing hardware, running our software and here are your additional rewards - besides what you get either way for holding a LICENSE token. (I could just use PeakMonster's service and get my rewards and not help with validation).
So, with my current ranking of about 29 in the validator list, I make about 3.85 USD for paying and running hardware. However, my current costs for the hardware alone are at least 15.00 USD per month. That means I would effectively be paying $11.15 USD each month just to promote decentralization for the SPS validators. Well, how can this be improved? Maybe give less to the top validators / rebuild the pool and give less to the LICENSE holders? Or simply remunerate decentralization better than is currently the case.
This is not meant to be a rant or an appeal - I was curious to see how the rewards develop for providing hardware and lo and behold - it is paid for - at least in my case - where exactly is the break-even point? I have no idea... I assume that only the top 10 are break even. Why don't I have an API running? Well, on the one hand I can't think of a cool domain name and on the other hand I want to know if I'm going to break even or not.
Well, anyway - make up your own mind about it.
Regards
Sadly-Non-Top-Validator louis.sps
