How profitable is it to run a masternode? What's the lowest requirements for the hardware?
1000DRK needed, earnings are: ((576 blocks/day divided by number of masternodes) * 20% of block reward) so appx 0.6DRK/day currently ~ 22% annual return.
Not trying to one-up, but to give people an idea of ways to get DRK.
I'm pulling about 9DRK/day on xpool with my upclocked Neptune. It doesn't add hashpower to the network, but it does take a few coins out of supply. Also, the machine is pretty much worthless for mining bitcoin, so this extends it's life and earns me a coin that, personally, I feel is the only one worth having; DRK. As a few more people with ~TH worth of power have come over to xpool, the admin has added a few more profitable coins now that we have the THs to actually pull blocks off of them. In the last two weeks, instead of having output go down ad diffs go up, I've actually pulled about a 50% increase in coin profit. Where else do you mine MORE as time goes on? I even have my son running my old BFL 30GH/s unit on it. More haspower == admin adds more profitable coins == make more DRK per hash the more people show up.
If you've got an FPG or ASIC for any algo, point it at xpool.ca and get DRKs.
You actually CAN still mine DRK. MNs are not the only way. For me, mining DRK is still more than an order of magnitude more profitable than an MN.