Hi @edicted
One aspect of the Hardfork was light witness nodes. Have you looked into this?
Here is a description: PHive Blockchain: Lightweight Hived Update
Project Goal: The objective was to reduce the memory consumption of the core Hive software (hived), which constitutes a full node.

Previous Requirement: Prior to the update, running a full Hive node typically required a significant amount of RAM (often cited as 16GB for building, and historically high for operational memory).

Current Requirement (Lightweight Hived): The foundational software update successfully reduced the memory footprint. The Lightweight Hived reportedly requires as little as 4GB of memory to run.

Status: The software update has been delivered and deployed by BlockTrades.

Impact on Node Operation:

The reduced hardware requirement lowers the economic and technical barriers for individuals and small teams to operate full nodes.

This includes independent node operators and network Witnesses (block producers).

The memory reduction is intended to enable the future capability of running personal Hive API nodes on ARM-based mobile devices.

Network Security Implications: Increasing the number of independent node operators contributes to the overall decentralization of the network and lowers reliance on centralized API endpoints.