Just wanted to start working on the Shardeum testent, what about the previous Shardeum testnet that ran nodes on VPS? Last year it only ran for two months on a VPS for who knows how long after that it left the project because it was unclear and now it's coming back with a new testnet. 
They said they will give rewards to node runners randomly. So not everyone will receive the airdrop. The team has not yet disclosed how they will distribute the node reward. But, they have confirmed that they will not reward all of the node runners. I provide you further explanation about the possible mechanisms to be used by the team to reward the node runners, and take a look at my SS below.
I took it from shardeum's discord group, and i hope the picture explains you well.