[ANN] Storj - Decentralized Storage

[whotheff]

Keep losing shard with nodes with maximum reputation. Same thing happen to everybody? Compared to shared from the beginning of this year, at the moment there is no point to be a farmer.
I'll wait for v3, but if the situation persist I'll quit....

I confirm, same happened to my node.

[coin@coin]

Check out this interesting blog by Storj's Shawn Wilkinson

The High Price of Traditional Cloud Storage

https://storj.io/blog/2018/11/the-high-price-of-traditional-cloud-storage/

[AngryWhiteWolf]

Storing 6GB at the moment.... once upon a time I had over 2TB. That is the reason I'm looking forward for V3. Any good news, price schedule ect. Shall we still hope to have before the new year?

[TropicalDog]

Check out this interesting blog by Storj's Shawn Wilkinson

The High Price of Traditional Cloud Storage

https://storj.io/blog/2018/11/the-high-price-of-traditional-cloud-storage/

This is one of main reasons why decentralised storage projects, like STORJ, will become more popular, more accepted in the very near future.
I strongly think that bright future waiting for crypto storage projects, which based on blockchain technology.

[whotheff]

Check out this interesting blog by Storj's Shawn Wilkinson

The High Price of Traditional Cloud Storage

https://storj.io/blog/2018/11/the-high-price-of-traditional-cloud-storage/

This is one of main reasons why decentralised storage projects, like STORJ, will become more popular, more accepted in the very near future.
I strongly think that bright future waiting for crypto storage projects, which based on blockchain technology.

If the only strong point point of Storj is lowering the price, I doubt it.
And the old companies as IBM, HP, Dell, etc are always pushing the storage technology development.
Nowadays all companies provide cloud services. Even non-IT companies
are trying to migrate out of what they do to cloud/IT.
Examples: Coca-Cola, Lidl, etc.
If Storj does not come up with a unique technology for storing data and only counts on price,
 it's going to be eaten by big fish.

[whotheff]

Neo joins the distributed storage companies list:

https://neonewstoday.com/general/neo-st-petersburg-competency-center-announces-neo-distributed-storage-system/

Storj might want to speed up things a bit.

[whotheff]

7 Storj for keeping 350GB online for a year.
That sits on top of all these talks.
So far Storj is unprofitable and soon the big companies will catch up.

Microsoft is investing in Data centers, IBM is going toward decentralizing,
Prices are dropping.

When Storj will actually be profitable for farmers and cheap and good enough for users?

[coin@coin]

7 Storj for keeping 350GB online for a year.
That sits on top of all these talks.
So far Storj is unprofitable and soon the big companies will catch up.

Microsoft is investing in Data centers, IBM is going toward decentralizing,
Prices are dropping.

When Storj will actually be profitable for farmers and cheap and good enough for users?

We are all on the same boat, with V2 (deprecated network) there were lots of low performing nodes (in the tens of thousands) with many just spinning up new nodes just to get a basic payout. So rewards were distributed to many nodes instead of fewer but better performing.

I wasn't looking to earn a profit by sharing storage as a farmer I wanted to contribute to the network with the hope that things will improve overtime.
The team also never encouraged anyone to spend money to buy resources to share on the network but recommended to use existing and/or spare hardware.

In terms of pricing Storj is already cheaper for end users according to the website and they mentioned in the blogpost above that they will have to keep their pricing competitive to make it a viable alternative to main object storage providers. The focus is on enterprise customers and developers rather than end users but any third party can build tools and alternative cloud storage solutions for end users. They have partnered with several open source platforms that are already testing the V3 network. Another thing that is very important to mention is that Storj's biggest seller is providing decentralized, client-side encrypted storage where data owners can trust that only they can access their files and no one else.

However, when V3 is released for farmers there will be "reputation" introduced and Storj will only allow farmers with good reputation. Reputation will be affected by the new rules for being a farmer and minimum requirements so that should drastically improve payouts for good performers and drop off the network low performing nodes. This will first make the network more resilient also make fewer people able to earn rewards for contributing to the network.

So I strongly doubt that regular folks will be able to make a living with Storj in the future unless they have resilient nodes, good bandwidth and upload/download speeds and I think it's for the best, I rather have a solid alternative to mainstream providers that allows for total privacy and security as well as high resiliance and performance.

[whotheff]

I'm also into Storj only for supporting the idea and the network.
However, I don't want that the be case forever.

I've already red all you just cited. Here are my concerns:

1. IBM is already in the game and decentralizing:
https://twitter.com/IBMcloud/status/1069396576777441280

2. If Storj was testing the farmers so far, farmers have also been testing Storj.
I have a 2 TB drive sitting in a box and I never used it for Storj, because it
is not profitable. The stats for my node are jumping by a weird pattern,
which has nothing to do with actual availability.

3. How is Storj going to convince me and all the potential farmers
 to put effort and resources in ver 3.0, after seeing how unprofital it
is all the way since ver 1.0 and ver 2.0?
The current payout cannot even cover the electricity consumed by the hard drive itself.
It is not fun to be online 24/7 for pennies.

4. How is my node supposed to be high quality, when they say: "don't invest
in hardware, because we cannot guarantee profitability"?

5. How a Storj node will be fast enough to compete with other nodes
and at the same time "anyone can share their hardrive and make money out of it!"?

6. Is there going to be a storage tiering system? Eg: fast, normal, slow
storage? Why dropping slow nodes, when you can use them?

7. How a consumer grade hardware will be used for Enterprise class service?
 Flash storage is the new norm for service providers.

Thanks

[coin@coin]

I'm also into Storj only for supporting the idea and the network.
However, I don't want that the be case forever.

I've already red all you just cited. Here are my concerns:

1. IBM is already in the game and decentralizing:
https://twitter.com/IBMcloud/status/1069396576777441280

2. If Storj was testing the farmers so far, farmers have also been testing Storj.
I have a 2 TB drive sitting in a box and I never used it for Storj, because it
is not profitable. The stats for my node are jumping by a weird pattern,
which has nothing to do with actual availability.

3. How is Storj going to convince me and all the potential farmers
 to put effort and resources in ver 3.0, after seeing how unprofital it
is all the way since ver 1.0 and ver 2.0?
The current payout cannot even cover the electricity consumed by the hard drive itself.
It is not fun to be online 24/7 for pennies.

4. How is my node supposed to be high quality, when they say: "don't invest
in hardware, because we cannot guarantee profitability"?

5. How a Storj node will be fast enough to compete with other nodes
and at the same time "anyone can share their hardrive and make money out of it!"?

6. Is there going to be a storage tiering system? Eg: fast, normal, slow
storage? Why dropping slow nodes, when you can use them?

7. How a consumer grade hardware will be used for Enterprise class service?
 Flash storage is the new norm for service providers.

Thanks

I'm only replying with what I know from following Storj blogs and community.

1. I think that is positive, the more players in the decentralized cloud space the better, surely each player will have their own benefit and their offering will differ. It will be better for end users as it brings more competition to the space.

2. You are relying on V2 stats, which don't yet reflect the new V3 network has it hasn't launched yet for farmers, to be called Storage Node Operators in V3. We should wait and see how it goes when we are able to try it out. Save your 2TB drive for when you will get given the opportunity to try the new sharing software. In the meantime register for the waitlist, I did and received a survey to fill in with minimum requirements.

3. See .2 above. Also I believe once V3 software is released there will be more stats to go by to allow potential contributors to make a better, more informed judgement on whether to jump in or not.

4. That was the case from Test Group A up to Test Group C including V2, we should see what the minimum requirements are for V3 once they are clear and defined and publicly available. I'm also looking forward to find out more.

5. They made it clear there will be different waves of invites for people who registers for the whitelist and fill in the survey, that will determine who gets invited first and who later based on their setup and performance as well as previous (V2) performance if people provides their node ids. There will be high end node operators and lower end ones.

6. I do think there will be different tiers over time, I didn't mean they will be dropping slower nodes, I meant they will drop lower performing nodes. So uptime will probably be one of the main factors influencing "reputation", together with bandwidth. If you fill in their survey you will see all the questions they ask about your nodes and the requirements. Based on that you will end in the first wave of invites or a following one.

7. Yes I agree, however data centers from major cloud players are sometimes miles if not thousand of miles away from end users, sometimes in a different country altogether, so even if you use SSDs in a data center maybe the distance from the actual data may not make it as fast as if it were in close proximity. In Storj's case, so long as there are plenty storage node operators and the network is widely distributed, you may have better data speeds because you may be getting the files from your neighbour or somewhere local.

I have been supporting Storj since its inception as you can tell I'm a big fan. So I'm confident the team is in the right place, has the right people and partners to achieve their goals. It's just a question of being a little bit patient as early 2019 comes we will all know better.

In the meantime check out their latest roadmap to keep an eye on what's next and when: https://storjlabs.aha.io/published/01ee405b4bd8d14208c5256d70d73a38

If you want to have more precise answers than mine I recommend joining their official community at https://community.storj.io where plenty of support agents and team members will be happy to help.

[Financisto]

1) What's is the plan for the STORJ (coin) for the new V3?

2) What's the incentive for holding STORJ gonna be from now on?

3) Is V3 storage gonna be billed in fiat yet?

I couldn't find info about the policy for the cryptotoken while reading the new whitepaper...

What's in for it?

[coin@coin]

1) What's is the plan for the STORJ (coin) for the new V3?

2) What's the incentive for holding STORJ gonna be from now on?

3) Is V3 storage gonna be billed in fiat yet?

I couldn't find info about the policy for the cryptotoken while reading the new whitepaper...

What's in for it?

As far as I know,

1) Same as it has always been, used to reward Storage Node Operators for sharing their free storage, that means the storage is paid in STORJ by the network itself, anyone else developing on it may accept other type of currencies and crypto however the storage itself is paid in STORJ so there will be more demand for tokens as the storage usage grows. It also offers discounts to end users paying for their own storage in STORJ. I also gathered that the current and future Open Source partners may get some revenue sharing for using the network with their own software and tools. Not sure if it's revenue sharing in STORJ or not, but here's how it reads on their own blogpost:

https://storj.io/blog/2018/10/open-source-revenue-models-in-the-cloud-era/

"The Storj platform can generate a sustainable revenue stream for open source projects every time their code is used on the network. As decentralization continues its rise to support new web and technology infrastructure, these mutually beneficial opportunities shouldn’t be overlooked."

2) Not sure about your incentive, in my case I hold the token for future use on the platform, I also believe the project will do well in the future seen all the new partners and their own projects. If all goes well more storage usage means more demand for the token to pay for the actual storage as the only ones offering storage are Node Operators (farmers).

3) So far they have accepted ETH, BTC and STORJ not sure what the plans are for FIAT but I believe they used Stripe in the past. As I mentioned above whatever they accept from customers, developers and corporations will have to be converted to STORJ to pay for the storage on the network side.

Hope this helps. If you join their community you may get more precise answers.

[coin@coin]

Another great read by Storj.

Taking Payments to The Next Level with Raiden

"Storj has been working with the team at the Raiden Network to explore using their platform for token payments across our network. So far, we’ve been quite impressed by their scalable payment solution in our tests of 1,000 to 100,000 payments. This article from Shawn Wilkinson looks at what we’ve accomplished over the past few weeks."

https://medium.com/@storjproject/taking-payments-to-the-next-level-with-raiden-e36fbc99f64f

[Loteco]

https://i.imgur.com/fQCHBnL.png

Key Features
Storj is a software project seeking to develop a next-generation cloud storage solution that improves upon existing cloud storage providers in four key areas of the service provided.  

Less expensive for the same industry standard redundancy, uptime, and reliability;
Preferably client-side encryption and hashing automatically enforced prior to upload so all data on the Storj network is encrypted and anonymized;
Open source code released under the MIT license;
Decentralized, autonomous, and implements multiple blockchains thereby making it resistant to interruptions of service and security risks.

A key project development goal is for Storj to include a blockchain-based dual purpose token scheme that serves as:

1. An incentive payment mechanism within the Storj network between consumers and    providers of storage space and bandwidth
2. An information storage mechanism to record the hash and location of files stored in the Storj network.

Storj won first place in the Texas Bitcoin Conference 2014 hackathon contest, by unanimous decision.  The prize is a guaranteed $250,000 donation from the backers at BitAngels for their initial round of “kickstarter-style” crowdfunding soon to be announced.  Storj team members Shawn Wilkinson and James Lowry made the final scheduled presentation of the contest, which included a working proof of concept software demo.  The founding devs are now getting the alpha software ready for general testing release while putting the finishing touches on the whitepaper and crowdfunding model.

Storj is a proposed decentralized storage system that seeks to disrupt the cloud storage industry by dramatically lowering costs to cloud storage users.  It would do this by paying incentives to storage providers in the form of a "blockchain-based dual purpose token" that would also store information about file integrity and storage locations.  The Storj network would autonomously issue, collect, and distribute these tokens so that users could pay for storage and be paid for providing storage.  All data would be encrypted, preferably client-side, before being uploaded to the network. We believe that Storj should simply be a mechanism for users to store their data, and the end user should have control over their data and privacy.

Web Nodes
At the Texas Bitcoin Conference 2014 we debuted a proof of concept web node for Storj. We have since been refining that software. You may upload your files to these web nodes and after about 10 minutes your files become accessible network wide. This requires no central server. Any web node connects to the prototype blockchain and may upload and download files at very little cost. This software will be made available to early backers and supporters.

New Cryptocurrency
Most cryptocurrencies use their blockchain as a ledger for coin balances. We would also like to use the blockchain to store information about file integrity and storage locations using structured metadata. To this end we will be releasing details about a new cryptocurrency that allows us to accomplish this and get our network running immediately with the help of our web nodes. We will be including this new cryptocurrency as part of our crowdfunding model.

Whitepapers
Many of you are hungry for the technical details. We have received great technical and conceptual feedback from Maidsafe and BitAngels. We are in the process of rewriting out initial whitepaper and finalizing crowdfunding details and timeline.

Special Thanks
BitAngels, esp. David Johnston and Jeremy Kandah - For your continuing input and support.
Jeff Garzik (jgarzik) - For technical and concept help.
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell) - For the initial seed concept and discussion thread.
Maidsafe, esp. David Irvine and Nick Lambert - Hackathon input, mentoring and continuing conceptual synergy.
Mastercoin Foundation - hackathon support, input and mentoring.

Dear Storj Team
Your coin may be free of listing on Aiodex if the number of votes is large enough.
Let's vote for it ☞ https://aiodex.com/vote
Explorer free for any coin listed ☞ https://explorer.aiodex.com/
Please, Don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Aiodex Team
Discord: https://discord.gg/RvhvdZq
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aiodexofficial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aiodex_official
Telegram: https://t.me/aiodex_official
Website: https://aiodex.com

[RivAngE]

Hello.
I had tried sharing my HD about a year ago, but after a month of 500GB sharing I hadn't received any rewards so I just quit.
Since I see you're actively working on Storj after a long time and your idea was a good one from the start, I'd like to get involved again.

Is there any kind of a calculator available to check my possible income from storage sharing?

[allfriends88]

It's interesting how in blockchain have auditnya themselves, from the beginning of the Storj is a competent project they even very transparent, can be seen by the way they report the Token and balance report. Storj will be a great company, good luck.

[coin@coin]

Hello.
I had tried sharing my HD about a year ago, but after a month of 500GB sharing I hadn't received any rewards so I just quit.
Since I see you're actively working on Storj after a long time and your idea was a good one from the start, I'd like to get involved again.

Is there any kind of a calculator available to check my possible income from storage sharing?

There isn't a calculator right now as the team is working on a major upgrade (Storj V3) and planning to release the software for sharing storage in early 2019.
The best thing you can do right now is to register your interest to become a storage node operator (used to be called farmer) at this link:

https://storj.io/sign-up-farmer

Once registered you will receive a survey to fill in with details of your setup and that will allow you to receive an invite for when the software goes live.
Invites will be sent in different batches, depending on your setup you could be in the first batch of invites or in a following one.

[RivAngE]

Hello.
I had tried sharing my HD about a year ago, but after a month of 500GB sharing I hadn't received any rewards so I just quit.
Since I see you're actively working on Storj after a long time and your idea was a good one from the start, I'd like to get involved again.

Is there any kind of a calculator available to check my possible income from storage sharing?

There isn't a calculator right now as the team is working on a major upgrade (Storj V3) and planning to release the software for sharing storage in early 2019.
The best thing you can do right now is to register your interest to become a storage node operator (used to be called farmer) at this link:

https://storj.io/sign-up-farmer

Once registered you will receive a survey to fill in with details of your setup and that will allow you to receive an invite for when the software goes live.
Invites will be sent in different batches, depending on your setup you could be in the first batch of invites or in a following one.

I checked the form and it seems to me they only require servers with 100% uptime? The form's lowest bandwidth options seem kinda large.
It's not about using your free 500GB of your old drive anymore huh? Not to mention that if you want to use it for half of the day then it's pointless.

[coin@coin]

Hello.
I had tried sharing my HD about a year ago, but after a month of 500GB sharing I hadn't received any rewards so I just quit.
Since I see you're actively working on Storj after a long time and your idea was a good one from the start, I'd like to get involved again.

Is there any kind of a calculator available to check my possible income from storage sharing?

There isn't a calculator right now as the team is working on a major upgrade (Storj V3) and planning to release the software for sharing storage in early 2019.
The best thing you can do right now is to register your interest to become a storage node operator (used to be called farmer) at this link:

https://storj.io/sign-up-farmer

Once registered you will receive a survey to fill in with details of your setup and that will allow you to receive an invite for when the software goes live.
Invites will be sent in different batches, depending on your setup you could be in the first batch of invites or in a following one.

I checked the form and it seems to me they only require servers with 100% uptime? The form's lowest bandwidth options seem kinda large.
It's not about using your free 500GB of your old drive anymore huh? Not to mention that if you want to use it for half of the day then it's pointless.

Exactly, things are changing with V3 to improve reliability. However even with V2 various factors were influencing payouts including bandwidth and uptime so it is not something new. To be able to compete with mainstream storage providers storage node operators need to also be reliable and in my opinion that is for the best. You shouldn't think that just because someone has a spare HD they can put it towards Storj and be able to make a profit. But don't let that discourage you, fill in the form as best as you can and see if you get an invite when the time comes.

[whotheff]

Exactly, things are changing with V3 to improve reliability. However even with V2 various factors were influencing payouts including bandwidth and uptime so it is not something new. To be able to compete with mainstream storage providers storage node operators need to also be reliable and in my opinion that is for the best. You shouldn't think that just because someone has a spare HD they can put it towards Storj and be able to make a profit. But don't let that discourage you, fill in the form as best as you can and see if you get an invite when the time comes.

It was advertised and promoted literary as "you have free space on your laptop's harddrive, why don't you sell it and make profit!" You can watch some of the videos of Shawn Wilkinson. This is exactly what he promotes. Now it turns out, that to compete with the storage providers, you have to either come up with a miraculous algorithm which negates all latencies combined: from network lag, time difference, dropped packets, disk performance. Or hire some retired admin with old storage servers in his basement (from the above mentioned storage providers) fill them up with drives and waste a few kW of electricity for pennies.

At the same time these enterprise storage providers have gone all NVME Flash.

Storj team have to very carefully reconsider their path, becase there is zero chance to compete with enterprise storage, using someone's kitchen laptop.

I think that the only chance they have is to be a cheap alternative to Tape backup storage. Where you hold the data for a long time, but rarely upload-download it. That might work.

Another path is to convince people that decentralized storage is much safer and more secure than traditional, but that is counterintuitive and will not be easy. And then bet on security.


good luck