Cost of Staking Own Node

[cryptobobbins]

I came here with exactly the same question, the answer appears to be just below.

Why so high staking requirements to run nodes

@eleck Thank you for joining the community! It is great to have you here. Staking requirements have to be a certain amount because we need to ensure that node operators have sufficiently staked tokens in the network that they are incentivized to behave properly. The run up of the FLOW price has definitely taken us off guard though, so we are going to re-examine the prices to make sure that they are accessible and secure

Staking for your own node needs to be high enough to incentivise maintaining its operation, but low enough that it doesn’t risk centralising the network with too few nodes. Anyone who can’t pony up the $FLOW for their own node can always stake with another.

But yes, the current node staking cost in fiat is astronomical and not healthy.