I'm telling you that too, it wasn't explicitly stated, and I've been filing reports here regularly like everyone else. If someone had warned me, I would have stopped right away.
Now that I did this without realizing it, please give me a chance and look at it with forgiveness.
OK, here is a post I made on Page 7 that explicitly states that additional nodes will not be counted:
What if I try running two nodes on two devices?

Additional nodes are not counted inside the challenge.
Maybe I would have forgiven you if this was an honest mistake, but after checking your
merit history, I see that you have exchanged merits with all the other banned users. There are even some other users who have participated here in your merit history. Therefore, I strongly suspect you are operating alt accounts, and this ban will stay.
I consider this matter final, and this dispute is closed. Please refrain from commenting here about your ban. Additional posts about this will be deleted. You may create a thread in Reputation if you want to do that.
You only mentioned on page number seven that multiple times you will not give merit but you have not said anything about the red tag. Now you have told me about forgiveness but you are suspicious of the merit exchange, with many of those who participated in this challenge but there is an exchange of merit. Still I would request you to return my account only, since users of other accounts are not saying anything about it.