[trevelyan]

The miners are certainly working for profit, yes.

The P2P network consists of volunteers who are not paid for running nodes, and whose contribution is basically guaranteeing open access to all of the data flows (confirmed and unconfirmed blocks and transactions) needed for other participants to join the network and participate on equal terms.

One of the major problems in the crypto space is that people attribute to "decentralization" the properties of openness that are actually there because of the volunteer (non-profit) provision of the open network from which miners/stakers are extracting their profits.