I would like to give my point of view here.
Please don’t respond with the old “use only hardware you have” or “you’re not supposed to earn anything.” I don’t do this for free. Never have, never ever will. Some might — but I sure as hell won’t.
I have been a node operator for 6 years. I started with janky setups and weird machines. I’ve never had any actual meaningful downtime. Debugged through the night. Kept my connection alive with 5G broadband for a period. I have seen the shit that comes with hosting. People will comment “it’s set and forget!” — it’s not, at least not for everyone. Things happen in life; locations have to be moved.
My current status is:
I have 445TB used space, and 1.5PB total allocated. That is a lot in this market. It’s a bunch of money sitting in very good hardware. And don’t comment “don’t buy hardware for Storj!” — I did not. I traded hardware for years and accumulated it.
I will just be here to say that if I see a reduction in payments, I will be shutting off all my 143 nodes. I will not bother with a graceful exit. Why should I be graceful, when Storj isn’t being graceful toward me? I don’t think the company is treating me the way I have been treating them.
143 hard drives, servers, RAM. I’m sitting on a lot of inventory here, and I can put that money into other things. Can I make a profit with Storj? Even with reduced payment? Yeah, maybe a bit, sure. But not when I look at the hours spent. And not when I compare it to putting that money into the market in other ventures.
I am writing this with a heavy heart. I have literally bled for this project (don’t put your hands in fans), I have been sweating in my server room, have lifted heavy server equipment, and gotten help from friends to pick up large amounts of hardware (some for selling, some for Storj).
This is a sad day. But all good things must come to an end. If I see missing or reduced payment — this is the end for me.
Money comes and goes, but this hobby stops being fun when I constantly have to deal with Storj’s mistakes (this is my opinion). The money might be used to save up for a house — I sure as hell am not giving it away for pennies to Storj.
Perhabs this will be the last picture of my hard work. I hope not.
Peace out, HG. Node Operator, software engineer, Storj Youtuber and previous supporter.
