And in other to be a node, ones device must be up 24/7 with available internet and stable power,
No, it doesn't have to. You can shut down your computer and only run it a short amount of time during every day or only a couple of days a week. The amount of data that has to be processed every day (downloaded, verified and stored) is about 170 MB on average.
Someone running a full node 24/7 specially if they accept incoming connections is doing the maximum contribution to the network.