Jarvie, I will answer part of your question.
IF they can get DEC back up and it costs the same amount or more why would us node holders be upset?
Because node holders get SPS and that SPS would be worth more and more as it went up. This rising of SPS would partially occur (or be aided by) the mechanism of buying the nodes in SPS. A lot of SPS is consumed by both nodes and RW.
In other words the nodes will sell when the SPS rises. SPS rises as more nodes are sold. Its a flywheel that Matt discussed correctly.
When you remove SPS and use DEC instead (a stable coin that is capped) to make the node purchase, then you are burning DEC and not SPS. While that in theory "could be" the same thing, there's absolutely no assurance that it will be. DEC held by the SPL business could be used up first for instance. NOTE: of course that would be their right to do, its just not what people THOUGHT was going to be the use of funds for purchasing nodes.
So removal of the direct flywheel mechanism using SPS for purchase removes a big guaranteed consumption of SPS in the future.
The only argument I could see for scrapping this mechanism is they feel that people will never pay the prices the nodes are listed for otherwise. If this is the case, I'd rather them be honest with us, tell us what changed to make them think nodes are now overvalued and won't sell in SPS, and then we as a community can discuss.
My point is they can't have it both ways. If they overpriced the Nodes, then we should have an open and honest conversation. If they didn't overprice nodes, then it works perfectly fine the way its structured. Using nodes or Riftwatchers (or cutting the amount of vouchers) to prop up DEC values, does nothing but artificially cover up the fact that DEC is down.
DEC's down for a reason and I can list some of those reasons (as can others), but the issue should be dealt with by creating more demand by bringing in and retaining more players. These artificial mechanisms only confuse and obfuscate the real issues. In my opinion, if they use their time and energy to grow the game, then all of these tweaks and twists/turns become irrelevant. And everyone would feel more confident.
simple things like changing season rewards to SPS and lowering DEC pool inflation could help.