@waddadonk
Well miners were always directly effected every time they cut the rewards in half. When Ethereum had a low price during the last "bear market" and rewards were the lowest ever (thank you ether voting community for not realizing the miner's value) it did get to a point that a miner was loosing money mostly due to electricity costs but if some of your equipment needed replaced, that was an extra big hit (miners demand for GPUs drove prices to the moon) . But of course miners are now reaping the rewards when their coins are now 10x in value.
That is why China become such a powerhouse in mining the crypto market, electricity costs are low, government support, equipment manufactured in country.
One might even say that this was a major signal the west was loosing in the technology front. Another signal AI, and i can go on and on.
The miners do get the gas price, but not all of it. Most miners join mining pools where the rewards are shared and you know the house always makes money on the rake.( a little poker humor) The gas prices are high and i do agree ridiculously high; but its due to the heavy congestion on the network. However the rewards have not gone up for miners. So you prove a block is valid and you get some gas money, but in the early days you were also able to find fresh ether in the blocks. Imagine if you did a block and found 3 ether coins; bust out the Macallan...woohoo. Dam i miss those days.
In the defense of the Ethereum community, it was always planned that it would start off as a Proof of work and migrate over to proof of stake (Eth 2.0). The debate really is over if the current plan for ETH 2.0, is the right one? Are the validators being looked at as part of the team or is it like most business where engineering is looked at as a cost. Few Issues that bothers me about ETH 2.0 is the amount they require for you to stake (32 eth or currently $64000). Validator will be punished if you are offline or not validating; doesn't matter if your in Texas and there is no power, or your ISP fails due to a hurricane. OMG please dont get hacked, thats all on you. Then the mafia\street gang mentality once your in you cant get out well at least until phase 2. Then they have the right to change all hardware\system requirements on phase 2 and we are not sure when they will know and share the information. This seems like a catch 22; if its working really well then we can price out the little guys by making changes they can not possible keep up with. It just seems as it is more stick then carrot for worker bees, if you build a plan where all enjoy the profits people will be running machines 24\7. You know the carrot and the stick term, well it seems like a lot more stick than carrot.
I hope i answered the question, drinking and forums bad combo
