#[6] imo, the primary benefit of ION is the censorship resistance provided by the anchor to Bitcoin.

Operationally, the lift to run an ION node is probably too high for most to consider actually running one primarily because of how tough it can be to run a reliable IPFS node. Given the high barrier, i feel that the likelihood of there being many ION nodes to choose from is low. This paired with the high likelihood that ION DIDs will almost always be resolved by ION nodes instead of clients/light wallets manually doing what an ION node does for you sort of nullifies / diminishes the censorship resistance provided by the anchor to Bitcoin.

Generally speaking, i think reducing the # of intermediary servers/nodes that have to be relied upon to resolve a DID is the best path forward because it decreases the likelihood of getting tricked (e.g. your example an ION node tricking a user) or being censored.

If there have to be intermediary servers/nodes in between, the hope would be that running that server/node is dead simple / ezpz as a means to increase the likelihood of many people/businesses actually running them. people already don't want to run servers so the barrier is already high.