Re: Will there ever be any monetary incentives to run a full node?
But the crux is that if you're not running a full node, you can't validate the info that you received and that is thus not ideal.
A properly implemented SPV client is as reliable as a full node. I don't know why, but this myth about the unreliability of SPV clients is very common in the Bitcoin community. Even more surprisingly, this myth is spread by Bitcoin developers.
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I don't think that there would be an optimum number of nodes to have, having more nodes on the network doesn't decrease the experience for everyone else but it'll improve redundancy. You can have 100 nodes for the network to work but the degree of redundancy would be low. Since they aren't compensated, there shouldn't be any cost borne by anyone else?
The question of whether to use a full node or not is primarily a question of convenience (not even reliability). Each user decides for themselves. How many users decide to launch a full node, so many of them will be. You decided that there should be as many full nodes as possible, and you should make an effort to increase their number. However, you do not provide any figures confirming this.
If, for example, you decide to compensate the owners of full nodes at the expense of miners, this directly reduces the security of Bitcoin. This raises the question of how optimal a solution would be to increase the number of full nodes by reducing security.