Is Running a Mysterium VPN Node Still Worth It? A Veteran Operator’s Perspective

For years, running a Mysterium VPN node promised a chance to join a decentralized movement, contributing your internet connection to a global bandwidth marketplace while earning rewards. Yet for many of us—a growing group of seasoned operators—the evolving landscape has raised troubling questions about whether the effort, technical challenges, and diminishing returns are still worth it.

 

The Earnings Dilemma

In the early days, even modest activity meant a consistent stream of rewards. However, as the network has grown and its economic model has shifted, many long-time operators now find themselves forced to scale up by onboarding additional nodes just to keep overall earnings steady. Larger, often data-center-grade operations seem to leverage economies of scale that individual operators simply cannot match. The need to constantly expand just to maintain income is frustrating and signals that the current earnings model may be favouring volume over quality.

 

The Quality Score Controversy

Adding further insult to injury, Mysterium appears to have altered how it measures node quality. Where real-time throughput once gave a clear picture of a node’s performance, the current method now includes a 24-hour bandwidth usage metric. This sliding window can significantly underrepresent high-speed connections that aren’t continuously active. For nodes with sporadic but robust sessions, this evaluation can feel like a misrepresentation—a metric that doesn’t truly capture peak performance when it matters.

 

Official Support: Generic Replies Over Genuine Engagement

When operators raise these critical issues, the response from official support often feels perfunctory. Instead of tailored, helpful troubleshooting or an acknowledgment of the deep systemic challenges, the support channels lean on generic, pre-written responses. This not only adds to the frustration—it also leaves both novice and veteran operators feeling that their voices aren’t being heard by a responsible or adaptive team.

 

CGNAT and Technical Hurdles for New Operators

For many new node runners, the dream of quick earnings is quickly dashed by a fundamental technical barrier: CGNAT (Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation). Being behind CGNAT means that a node cannot have a publicly accessible IP address—a core requirement for proper function in a decentralized network like Mysterium’s. Unfortunately, many newcomers only discover this issue after facing persistent connection problems, adding another layer of confusion and aggravation at a stage when the onboarding process should be transparent and supportive.

 

Residential IP Misrepresentation: The /24 Subnet Problem

Perhaps one of the most serious concerns involves the misuse of IP addressing. Mysterium’s vision relies on nodes hosted on genuine residential IP addresses—unique, organically assigned addresses typically found in home networks . This distinction is vital because residential IPs offer greater trust and authenticity compared to datacenter or business IPs.

However, recent discussions in the community reveal that some operators have access to full /24 subnets and are falsely marking these as residential, even when running them in datacenters. A /24 block, which provides 256 IP addresses, is a typical data-center resource rather than the single IP assigned to a home connection. This misrepresentation undermines the integrity of the network, erodes trust, and creates an uneven playing field. Not only does it skew the quality metrics, but it also opens up opportunities for those who can afford these data centers to dominate market placements in a system meant to be decentralized and organic.

 

The Bigger Picture: Rethinking Participation in a Shifting Ecosystem

When you combine falling rewards, questionable quality scoring, generic support responses, CGNAT challenges, and now the abusive classification of data-center IPs as residential, the initial promise of Mysterium as a truly decentralized VPN network comes into sharp focus.

• Can the current model truly sustain independent, home-based operators?
• What measures will Mysterium take to curb the misuse of IP address classifications?
• Will the support structure evolve in tandem with these systemic challenges?

For many of us who have believed in the decentralized future, these issues represent not just technical hiccups but fundamental misalignments between the network’s ideals and its operational realities.

 

Conclusion

If you’ve invested time, money, and passion into running a Mysterium VPN node, the recent changes feel like a betrayal of the decentralization ethos we signed up for. The evolving quality metrics, lacklustre support, and technical hurdles—compounded by the shady practice of mislabelling full /24 subnets as residential—pose critical questions about the network’s future viability.

Perhaps it’s time for the community to bring these issues to the forefront, demand more transparent practices, and explore alternative decentralized VPN solutions that better honour the promise of fair, independent node operation. Your experiences, frustrations, and suggestions are essential in driving the necessary changes.

According to the official Mysterium Network FAQ, each node must be linked to a different residential IP address—typically one provided to a household—not a block from a data centre.