[ANN] Storj - Decentralized Storage

[super3]

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.

[super3]

To address any concerns about vaporware here is a screenshot of one our web nodes:


It works, but needs a bunch of polish.

[fordlincoln]

Have been looking forward to hearing more about this project since the Texas Hackathon
great job guys

[RGBKey]

Considering I have over 2 TB of space just on my normal hard drive, i'd love to use this. It looks really cool.

[super3]

Have been looking forward to hearing more about this project since the Texas Hackathon
great job guys

Been in stealth mode since then working on the web nodes. Now that they are working quite well we can start to talk about the project a little. We don't like the 2 weeks^tm model, so we only really talking about what we have working.

If you want more info you can sign up for the newsletter on storj.io

[super3]

Considering I have over 2 TB of space just on my normal hard drive, i'd love to use this. It looks really cool.

We have removed our whitepaper because we want to refine it a bit more. At least according to those numbers if you sold you hard drive at Dropbox prices you would make $2,000 a year off your 2 TB. You will be a very happy camper when we add proof of resource to Storj.

We aren't promising that quite yet as the computer science algorithms need a ton more work, but you might be able to run a web node (if you don't mind doing a decent amount of config) and make a nice sum of coins that way.

[RGBKey]

Considering I have over 2 TB of space just on my normal hard drive, i'd love to use this. It looks really cool.

We have removed our whitepaper because we want to refine it a bit more. At least according to those numbers if you sold you hard drive at Dropbox prices you would make $2,000 a year off your 2 TB. You will be a very happy camper when we add proof of resource to Storj.

We aren't promising that quite yet as the computer science algorithms need a ton more work, but you might be able to run a web node (if you don't mind doing a decent amount of config) and make a nice sum of coins that way.

If there's decent documentation on how everything works I won't have a problem doing any of that stuff. I don't care how much I get paid really, as long as it's noticeable that something is happening. The problem is that the 2 TB is split between being half on my 2 TB hard drive and the other half on an empty 1 TB external. An easy solution would probably just be to partition my main drive.

EDIT: If you have any kind of beta for this, please let me know. I'd be eager to help work out bugs and just generally help with this.

EDITEDIT: I just looked on the website and entered my email, didn't see that before.

[super3]

Considering I have over 2 TB of space just on my normal hard drive, i'd love to use this. It looks really cool.

We have removed our whitepaper because we want to refine it a bit more. At least according to those numbers if you sold you hard drive at Dropbox prices you would make $2,000 a year off your 2 TB. You will be a very happy camper when we add proof of resource to Storj.

We aren't promising that quite yet as the computer science algorithms need a ton more work, but you might be able to run a web node (if you don't mind doing a decent amount of config) and make a nice sum of coins that way.

If there's decent documentation on how everything works I won't have a problem doing any of that stuff. I don't care how much I get paid really, as long as it's noticeable that something is happening. The problem is that the 2 TB is split between being half on my 2 TB hard drive and the other half on an empty 1 TB external. An easy solution would probably just be to partition my main drive.

EDIT: If you have any kind of beta for this, please let me know. I'd be eager to help work out bugs and just generally help with this.

EDITEDIT: I just looked on the website and entered my email, didn't see that before.

Our early supporters will get to play around with the web nodes. Those just get stuff working and allow you to play around with our platform.

Should not be a problem when we have our apps for that. We also plan on working with Maidsafe for the whole sell your hard drive part.

[RGBKey]

Considering I have over 2 TB of space just on my normal hard drive, i'd love to use this. It looks really cool.

We have removed our whitepaper because we want to refine it a bit more. At least according to those numbers if you sold you hard drive at Dropbox prices you would make $2,000 a year off your 2 TB. You will be a very happy camper when we add proof of resource to Storj.

We aren't promising that quite yet as the computer science algorithms need a ton more work, but you might be able to run a web node (if you don't mind doing a decent amount of config) and make a nice sum of coins that way.

If there's decent documentation on how everything works I won't have a problem doing any of that stuff. I don't care how much I get paid really, as long as it's noticeable that something is happening. The problem is that the 2 TB is split between being half on my 2 TB hard drive and the other half on an empty 1 TB external. An easy solution would probably just be to partition my main drive.

EDIT: If you have any kind of beta for this, please let me know. I'd be eager to help work out bugs and just generally help with this.

EDITEDIT: I just looked on the website and entered my email, didn't see that before.

Our early supporters will get to play around with the web nodes. Those just get stuff working and allow you to play around with our platform.

Should not be a problem when we have our apps for that. We also plan on working with Maidsafe for the whole sell your hard drive part.

That's awesome, I seriously cannot wait until this and things like maidsafe are a thing. We're getting closer and closer to a decentralized internet, but I think one problem is going to be too many decentralized platforms that end up just competing with each other for users.

[super3]

Considering I have over 2 TB of space just on my normal hard drive, i'd love to use this. It looks really cool.

We have removed our whitepaper because we want to refine it a bit more. At least according to those numbers if you sold you hard drive at Dropbox prices you would make $2,000 a year off your 2 TB. You will be a very happy camper when we add proof of resource to Storj.

We aren't promising that quite yet as the computer science algorithms need a ton more work, but you might be able to run a web node (if you don't mind doing a decent amount of config) and make a nice sum of coins that way.

If there's decent documentation on how everything works I won't have a problem doing any of that stuff. I don't care how much I get paid really, as long as it's noticeable that something is happening. The problem is that the 2 TB is split between being half on my 2 TB hard drive and the other half on an empty 1 TB external. An easy solution would probably just be to partition my main drive.

EDIT: If you have any kind of beta for this, please let me know. I'd be eager to help work out bugs and just generally help with this.

EDITEDIT: I just looked on the website and entered my email, didn't see that before.

Our early supporters will get to play around with the web nodes. Those just get stuff working and allow you to play around with our platform.

Should not be a problem when we have our apps for that. We also plan on working with Maidsafe for the whole sell your hard drive part.

That's awesome, I seriously cannot wait until this and things like maidsafe are a thing. We're getting closer and closer to a decentralized internet, but I think one problem is going to be too many decentralized platforms that end up just competing with each other for users.

Not really, I'd venture to say competition doesn't exists at this point and may not ever exist. They will all seamlessly integrate through APIs. After all you probably have a Facebook AND a Twitter right? You might have a preference, but still use both.

[RGBKey]

Not really, I'd venture to say competition doesn't exists at this point and may not ever exist. They will all seamlessly integrate through APIs. After all you probably have a Facebook AND a Twitter right? You might have a preference, but still use both.

Actually I have neither, but I get your point

[Dabs]

Wow. Is this the new mining? Can I start buying terabytes of space, and convert my litecoin rig from 5 GPUs, to 6 hard drives? My motherboard has 6 SATA ports.

And I also do not have Facebook or Twitter.

[super3]

Wow. Is this the new mining? Can I start buying terabytes of space, and convert my litecoin rig from 5 GPUs, to 6 hard drives? My motherboard has 6 SATA ports.

And I also do not have Facebook or Twitter.

Ha ha, perhaps someday soon. Perhaps it was a poor example.

[xeroc]

@super3
the link to the pdf
 /assets/paper/ComparisonofDropboxtoaDistributedStorageSystem.pdf

is a deadline :-(

[Mike Hearn]

Do you really need a new cryptocurrency for this? I thought about how to build StorJ many times and at no point did I never need anything more than standard Bitcoin as it exists today.

[super3]

Do you really need a new cryptocurrency for this? I thought about how to build StorJ many times and at no point did I never need anything more than standard Bitcoin as it exists today.

Using a new cryptocurrency to bootstrap it. It pretty much is standard Bitcoin just with just some extra data in the transaction, like Datacoin. We can store basic metadata about where the files are and their status.

This allows us to launch something now, and then we can get a little more creative, and remove our dependency on a blockchain. I've read gmaxwell's and jgarzik's writings over and over again. Love to hear your ideas.

[ripper234]

Great jobs guys.
Posted to reddit.

[Vitalik Buterin]

Do you really need a new cryptocurrency for this? I thought about how to build StorJ many times and at no point did I never need anything more than standard Bitcoin as it exists today.

You don't _technically_. But it is a very good way of funding a decentralized protocol economically. I personally think the ugliness to benefit ratio here is several orders of magnitude lower than something like proprietary software, mandatory fees or, satoshi cyber christ forbid, DRM.

[precrime3]

Looks very interesting. Technical details are fuzzy for me but is it that you run a node and it works likes POS or is it like POW? Also what I think would be better that we were rewarded in coins that you could redeem either for:

a. More storage space for uploading.
b. Bandwidth, etc....
c. BTC

[super3]

Do you really need a new cryptocurrency for this? I thought about how to build StorJ many times and at no point did I never need anything more than standard Bitcoin as it exists today.

You don't _technically_. But it is a very good way of funding a decentralized protocol economically. I personally think the ugliness to benefit ratio here is several orders of magnitude lower than something like proprietary software, mandatory fees or, satoshi cyber christ forbid, DRM.

This.

Looks very interesting. Technical details are fuzzy for me but is it that you run a node and it works likes POS or is it like POW? Also what I think would be better that we were rewarded in coins that you could redeem either for:

a. More storage space for uploading.
b. Bandwidth, etc....
c. BTC

In the early stages a node will offer a service and charge for bandwidth. Later on we implement proof of resource. Yes, the coins can be redeemed for what you mentioned.