Unpopular opinion, but why instead of trying to come up with a way to incentivize node runners we make mandatory to run a node for Regular/Standard Governance participation? I call it Node Govs. So instead of standard gov and DeFi gov we now have Node Govs and DeFi Govs. DeFi stays the same, participating through LPs and DeFi platforms. Node Govs participate as Standard Govs but now, you have to run a node to be eligible. Rewards are allocated depending on the amount of nodes running at the beginning/end of each period. If number of nodes is running low, more governance rewards are allocated to Node Govs instead of DeFi Govs.
Reasoning is that standard governance (not counting LPs) does nothing for the chain, TVL, security, etc.
You cannot run a node? No problem, provide LP or sign to governance through a DeFi platform and you are good to go.
You are a whale, Binance, Coinbase participating in gov and eating small fishes rewards without doing anything? Great, now you have to run a node or participate through DeFi, so now you are helping secure the chain
I haven’t thought a lot about it so I dunno if this makes sense. But making mandatory running nodes for standard gov makes sense to me.