Yeah, it might be a bad choice of words to call theres masternodes.
May be it should have a name which does not suggest a hierarchy but reflects the purpose, for example: darknode, mixernode, dsmnode (dark send mixer/maintainer node) or something like that.
By the way, I see the development crossed the line where it's no longer safe for the average Joe to run a masternode.
You need to enter your wallet passphrase on the online machine, so now it can be easily stolen (keyloggers).
To tell the truth, I am not sure if I have the curage myself to do this (enter the passphrase without immediately sending every coins to new addresses). And I would not call myself neither a noob, nor a coward.

Any chance for binaries built for OpenWRT?
I think I want to give it a shot and run darkcoind on my router. May be I would be slightly more comfortable with that. It's easier to monitor because it's a lot smaller and simpler linux OS.
Q: What happens if I loose my IP address?
If your masternode is down, the network will try to connect to you then it will use the next one and remove you from the list.