I am personally not fond of the idea of developers having to run nodes. Node returns are also not as predictable as they depend on the number of nodes on the network. But the main thing is I don’t want to create a system where Zcoin infrastructure is dependent on the Zcoin team maintaining it and should be on our own personal capacity. Also incentives are not aligned as i detail further.
I don’t want to give exact breakdown of how the dev wallet is used for competitive reasons but let’s say if Zcoin is at 5 dollars we’ll be running roughly break even at about USD64,800 a month. With the recent boost we’re doing much more comfortable but still it’s lean.
Consider that we have significant amount of full time members (8 members) along with semi-full time (3 members).
6 operations/community support/marketing members (4 full time)
and cryptographic research, PR team, server infrastructure and tools, office space…I can say that we’re a super lean team. Many of us are taking cuts in our salaries too with the downturn because we really believe in the project. These team members will expect rises in the salary to reward their commitment if the price increases as they deserve.
Our research funding and other activities such as conference attendance/community building are coming from our reserves that we accumulated in better times. Note that during better times, exchange listings and many other services cost a lot!
Now consider that a silicon valley programmer costs about 250-500k USD a year this means that other projects might just higher 3-5 programmers for the same price 
If there is no reward, a big majority of our team will leave as the salary is their source of income. Znodes alone at current prices are not enough to sustain life and if they were enough, then there’s a huge centralization of ownership problem. Most are full time jobs and none of us are super rich and need to support our life and families.
A znode currently gets 90 dollars a month and after halving this will go down 45 USD provided that there are no new Znodes and price is the same.
Also it is unfair to have some people reaping benefits just by virtue of owning while others have to work hard for it. Expecting people to work seriously for free or rely on donations (such as Grin) or to boost their bag is a poor way to fund consistent development and opens us to outside influence. Even Bitcoin heavily relies on paid development by Blockstream which has questionable motives. I rather have a fund that funds development transparently but if we don’t do well or don’t deliver results, we can be replaced which keeps us honest.