So the nuisance of syncing the whole chain, which only increases in time, is the incentive not to turn it off?
Interesting, because I think that is one of the reasons why average users just use SPVs instead.
So what's the incentive for others, that currently don't run it, to turn it on in the first place?
One wouldn't have to synch the whole chain. Only back to the old checkpoint (which is already verified back to the genesis block from the initial start).
The incentive is that the on-disk size is less than 1GB regardless of total chain size.