Running nodes is pretty easy with setups like DappNode. Full eth nodes arent that big, i synced a new one in a couple of days last week onto an old ssd.
Most heavy contract data is stored offchain on ipfs, so you can just pin the stuff you are interested in.
Where i would agree is indexing/searching lots of data is a pain. You cant just give an address and get a list of tokens associated with it, you have to call every token and get its balance. It makes sense, but its annoying, and is why opensea api is so popular for nfts. But i have hope with services like TheGraph growing that search and index also has distributed and resilient design and we become less dependant on one endpoint api.
Most heavy contract data is stored offchain on ipfs, so you can just pin the stuff you are interested in.
Where i would agree is indexing/searching lots of data is a pain. You cant just give an address and get a list of tokens associated with it, you have to call every token and get its balance. It makes sense, but its annoying, and is why opensea api is so popular for nfts. But i have hope with services like TheGraph growing that search and index also has distributed and resilient design and we become less dependant on one endpoint api.