How good a machine needs to be to run a hallmarked node? In terms of hardware?
Very low spec. The $5/month VPS nodes from DigitalOcean are easily powerful enough for a single node each. The real prerequisite is that you have a static public IP addres, or at least a very stable connection that only changes when your router restarts. Note that we changed the payout from 666 per day to 1 million each day distributed equally to all nodes.
There's no point left in still having the Escrow@poloniex information still there.
Actually the main part of the coins that have not been distributed yet are still held at Poloniex, so this is still the case.