Shield has grown fast in market value. I can still remember mining this so easily because a forum member by the name of darkenedsoul posted about it in the Deep Onion forum. I was able to mine a lot but unfortunately had to sell to pay off bills.  Mining Shield helped me tremendously.

Now with that big market capitalization, the devs can easily raise the needed funds to improve Shield better and faster. They can now hire additional full time team members to work on Shield.