Actually, the whole point of cryptocurrencies is to run your own node. The situation you describe with KYC/AML is simply due to the fact that most people are too lazy to run their own node (yes, it takes some effort, but without it, all you have is the same banking system as before). My intention with this plugin was to be able to connect to your own wallet, the CoinPayments platform was an afterthought, because many people asked for more convenience. If you introduce centralized components into crypto you have something that is much worse than the banking sector (the worst of both worlds). The good news is that these legal hurdles might be exactly what’s required to push people to care about being independent and to actually set up their own nodes.
Personally I would not trust Dash as much as Monero if I wanted to stay anonymous. If you want strong anonymity, I believe right now Monero is the way to go. Yes you pay a premium for strong anonymity, but the fees will be addressed in Monero layer 2.
Personally I see Dash and most coins being overhyped, and only Bitcoin and Monero really have something to offer right now out of all the coins out there. It remains to be seen if Ethereum is useful, depending on whether someone comes up with a real use case for smart contracts, and there are strong arguments against their usefulness as a whole (the whole debate with decentralization vs oracles, identity, etc).
Right now we’re waiting to see if new technologies like Schnorr signatures can be added to Bitcoin layer 1 to provide strong anonymity, because you cannot do anonymity in layer 2 effectively. Monero has strong anonymity in layer 1, and it can now add scaling in layer 2. This is why I find it so promising. Dash on the other hand has been overhyped and some do not even consider it a privacy coin at all. It definitely has much less privacy than Monero and other Cryptonote forks.
Best of luck if you decide to set up a node.