Tranz, have you looked at the HUSH and ZEN wallets? They forked from ZCASH in some way and are java based, clean and quick to sync with minimal connections. HUSH also joined SuperNET DEX.

ZEN is implementing NODE incentive where 3.5% of every block mined is paid to the node operators. Just requires static IP and creating a certificate for your node, but I think that is more for ZEN's encrypted transactions than the node itself.

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All of those are challenging and time consuming and I (we) in no way expect you to do any of that Tranz, though you have already made such good progress on 1 and 2 above. But the possibilities there are awesome!