> The fact that Alchemy and Infura alone have hundreds of thousands of customers up to and including arguably THE most prominent names in the blockchain space d

> The fact that Alchemy and Infura alone have hundreds of thousands of customers up to and including arguably THE most prominent names in the blockchain space demonstrates just how far from reality and common use that statement is. I don't think it shows that! Running your own services, including say email/source control/infrastructure etc. used to be much more common; people started to pay the cloud not because it's super hard to run yourself, but merely because it's even easier to let someone handle it and focus on your own product. I've also run my own nodes, but I still prefer to pay Alchemy. However, I don't disagree with the thrust of your points.