... You should look into what Stratum v2 is. By "running your own block creation infrastructure", do you mean running a pool? No infrastructure is needed. Creat

... You should look into what Stratum v2 is. By "running your own block creation infrastructure", do you mean running a pool? No infrastructure is needed. Creating a block is very easy and cheap. What's expensive is repeatedly hashing that block enough times to mine the block. Stratum v2 doesn't get rid of mining pools, it just puts the block creation in the hands of individual miners. Pools still get a cut, and pool miners still share the rewards. This is because Stratum v2 makes certain requirements of blocks created by miners such that when they mine a block, the pool and everyone properly gets paid along with it.