Maybe a too newbie question, but I am running a full node for months, and there are at least 1,000 transactions flagged that I was the first to relay them... do you get any kind of "reward" for that?

And just for understanding better how Bitcoin works... wasn't that the actual thing that you do when mining? I am probably confusing terms here, right? Or maybe that was true when difficult was "just" 10 Thousand, not the 805 Billion that is today!

Anyway, all my mining is via pools... so I have never even tried / understood how solo mining or the actual mining pool obtains rewards.

Any inputs?

Thanks!