i'm not sure paying users to run Nym node (?) is best solution to solve the fact that there's no incentive to run a node.
Why not? The more running nodes there is the more secure the network gets, I don't see why incentivizing people to run nodes would hurt in this case. In fact, this could solve one of Tor's potential problems imo; The fact that Tor doesn't have *many* nodes increases the chances of having people connect to 5 nodes runned by the same entity/person and potentially have their privacy compromised. Same applies to most cryptocurrencies too I guess? With better distribution of hashrate, the network becomes more resistant to attacks.
Just like PoW in cryptocurrency, it also means people with lots of resources & efficient cost could run lots of nodes to maximize the profit.
But it's too soon to accurately predict the direction of node distribution on this network.