...
There is no financial gain but you can't say there is no direct advantage while running your own node, cause you don't need to rely to 3rd party to validate your transaction. Also when you run your own node the privacy of the address and transaction history seems to be more valuable than few sats.
I don't understand something here. When I use an exchange, such as Coinbase, they do all the work. Or at least get it started. When I use a wallet, such as Trezor, the request is submitted to the Bitcoin network and some number of the Bitcoin nodes validate the transaction. In the response you wrote, I get the hint that I might need to do something more to validate the transaction. Please explain a bit more.
Bitcoin nodes play vital roles in the verification of transactions in bitcoin network. Verifying and adhering to the consensus rules set aside to guide transactions and blocks is the main or primary duty of a bitcoin node. In line with what he said, your node will participate in going through all transactions and block to determine if they'll be accepted to join the block with the most chain work; honest block. You're not required any task. It's left for miners to add new transactions to the blockchain. While the node verify if the transactions are eligible to be included to the block; before agreeing to add them in the blockchain. Nodes follow the block with the most work, which creates a possibility for 51% attack. But, it's almost impossible for a single individual or institution to possess a computing power that is more than all the computers used by miners across the globe, that can validate a block's difficulty; the number of hash-rate required to mine a block. Even possessing 39% of the computing power can perform a 51% attack thereby enforcing double spending. When a node sees such a block from a suspicious miner it'll involuntarily accept it to the block and the miner can take the advantage of reversing his funds or double spend.