Paying someone to run nodes (or running one yourself on a third party controlled VPS service like amazon or digital ocean, for that matter) wouldn't serve much of a purpose.
I beg to differ. You will still have those people with enough resources and bandwidth to keep it decentralized. I want to add to that group, by giving people with local bandwidth and resource issues a platform to contribute to this important service.
These people would not necessarily be running a full node, because of these problems, but they can now contribute financially to run a full node, by just funding the people who can do this.
I have some friends in some rural areas with very bad internet and they desperately want to contribute, but the local infrastructure issues, stop them from doing that.
This does not mean that we would have only 1 organization doing this in 1 location.
Your position assumes there is a contribution created by running more nodes on Amazon. There isn't, for the most part. Effectively, paying amazon to run more nodes is just funding a benign sybil attack by Amazon on the network.
I'm well aware that there are parts of the world where it is prohibitively expensive to run a node-- thats part of the reason why efforts like the satellite broadcast of Bitcoin exist. But just because there is a problem doesn't mean that any particular alternative is a solution.
Just because someone takes on a cost does not mean they are making a useful contribution. The first node on amazon was a useful contribution, perhaps you could argue that one in each availability zone is a contribution, but we're vastly beyond that, and adding more nodes on amazon mostly just improves the ability to monitor traffic without being noticed for amazon and sybil attackers who purchase their services.
No, my idea is actually not focussed on large companies like Amazon, because they are centralized and if they decide to shutdown all nodes, then we will lose a huge amount of nodes. I was thinking more of some individuals or smaller merchants with enough resources to help with this.
Let's say a small merchant in an developed country wants to host a full node and they have the resources, but they want someone else to pay for it, then this would be an ideal match. You create a website that brings the two parties together and you find someone to validate the merchant in some way.
I am just brainstorming some way to bring two parties together, that might help to increase decentralization of nodes. I never even considered that it must be one centralized organization. You bring them together and you provide a Bitcoin address, where people can donate money for the full nodes and then you monitor the partnership.
