It has changed over the years. They use to be lifetime contracts but now most places will give you a yearly which looks good till you see how fast mining is going and you might barely break even by years end!
There are a ton of scams though which say they are mining platforms but instead are just trash sites which have no hardware behind them to support the mining you just bought.
I just started heavy in staking though and about to boot up my first ever masternode! I feel like if the UIs get easier and more people can do it that it will catch on and more people will start staking.
Im very curious about staking with ETH or maybe doing so!
I agree I like the concept of it but it been implemented wrong. Cool news about the masternode! What coins are you running?