Prove is hard to give.
If the network was only supported by mining farms, nobody was aware of the existence of Bitcoin today.
The small nodes are the capillaries in the network and important for mass adoption and making the network more secure.

I work on a personal project to check the possibilities to manage the flow of blockchain information.
Now running 8 Bitcoin nodes behind my router and 1 is a full node.
Each of the 8 internal nodes is connected to another internal node and I play with the adjustments.
The challenge is that I want to send/coach transactions/information to eco-BTC miners when they are ready and available.
This is a multi-blockchain application I have in mind.
More info in the future.

Have a nice day,

Jan