I compiled and run an ethereum beaconnode on a raspberry 4.
How much is this helping the ecosystem ? Why is running a beaconnode which helps validators to find the next transaction faster not being supported by fees (however tiny they may be). There seems to be no incentive to run this at all ... or am I missing something ?
You would need to "activate" your validator by depositing 32 ETH, and it takes a bit of time after the deposit is made before it will transition from pending to active.
Also, at the present time, it's a good idea to run an ETH1 node locally, with your activated validator set to check it for blocks added to mainnet. You could instead use a free or paid Infura endpoint, but the extra latency may prove problematic.
Once activated, your validator would begin to earn rewards for making attestations and block proposals, etc. The APR is currently around 6% - 10%, depending on your validator's performance. Here are some stats for a validator I chose at random:
