Lowering the min stake means more validators. More validators means more signatures to aggregate. This impacts how short slots can be, or, more generally, how quick we can finalize. Do you want a chain that has short slots and finalizes quicker? If not, no one blocks you from doing an EIP proposing to extend slot time, or add more slots to an epoch, thus indirectly time-to-finality and decrease min stake in parallel. The chance of going years (>=2) without a proposal is 1.73%, assuming you're a 32-ETH validator. Also, proposal rewards (incl MEV) are merely ~25% of the total reward, most is from attesting where you need no luck. Pls report your RAM problems to clients if not already done. I think testing is done on the recommended hardware (eip-7870), and those machines habe had no issues. How much work maintainance and monitoring is for (solo) stakers is individually different + debateable and probably depends how technical one is. I know validators that haven't been touched (except upgrading for forks), not even actively monitored, for years. Based on the 2026 @ethStaker survey, 43% spend less than 1h per month on it. 70% less than 2h per month. With today's apy, that's ~$80-$160/working hour.