ELH is definitely a long shot, in my opinion. But, I invested in it and I’m running a node. The rewards for running a staking node are fairly good. There are more nodes joining in every day though, so rewards are declining somewhat rapidly. Every 100,000 blocks, the requirement to qualify for staking rewards increases by 10,000 ELH. At the current rate, this forces stakers to buy more ELH in order to continue receiving rewards after each block height milestone of 100,000… but the staking rewards help supplement the required quantity of ELH that needs to be purchased.
This process should weed out the nodes, and the ELH rewards given to people with smaller quantities of ELH. Only the truly committed will continue to qualify for rewards as the block height increases in 100,000 increments. This is a good thing, but also a bad thing. It may centralize the project a bit, for a while, until the node reward requirement caps off at 100,000 ELH at block height 1,000,000. However, this gives the project time to develop while having less selling pressure, and more buying pressure as node holders accumulate more ELH to qualify for more rewards.
I just spoke with one of the hired developers of ELH. He has recently convinced the ELH administrative team to AVOID increasing the ELH holding requirement for staking and receiving rewards, in order to have more active nodes on the network. While this does not have the same benefits as the original system, it has other more important benefits, such as added network security, more nodes, more resistance to network attacks, etc.
This provides an easier entry for those who wish to deploy an ELH node, and will ultimately lead to a network with more adoption and security. While I have mixed feelings about the update, it is obviously a superior solution.