I’ve actually registered on this forum for the first time ever just to leave an opinion regarding this subject, despite the fact I’ve been a node operator for quite some time (a work in progress, with ups and downs).
I’ve seen, as well, both announcements and the strike proposal for November 11th (which I won’t enter, btw).
In order to make things easier I’ll simply write my thoughts on this with some bulletpoints (and invite everyone to answer this, or consider this, on one or the other end of the spectrum):
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I do understand the reason why the proposed payout is being subject to a change. And, truth being said, I also understand the economics that support it. That being said, I personally think this is the wrong way to go, rate-wise.
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When we decide to put to service an HDD to Storj, we decide to do it under several different aspects, including predicted durability of the hard drive, expected payouts, predictability of the load, size of the networks, and we sustain a whole structure of ours to deal with requirements, including having a good enough Internet (and that is not a guarantee on some parts of the planet!), having a PC turned on 24/7 (with all incurred electricity costs), and etc.
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I leave outside of it all this being the third time a payout change is announced, since it was expected. But the rates in this regard are meager, very very meager, and combining with the 75/50/25 current structure of held amount (which does what’s intended for), this creates a very discouraging scenario not only for further network operators join Storj, but as well for manteinance of all current ones. I’m not even talking on the reduction from 10$ to 2$ on egress/repair, I’m talking on the final paid monthly amount, which I believe it’s what we’re all here for, regardless of being here for 1 day or 5 years.
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Storj is currently at a decisive moment. With Sia just around the corner with a product that will technically be as good as Storj from the get-go for node operators, some structures being developed, and with free fluctuation and payments for all nodes, letting several aspects be held by the operators themselves like storage pricing and ingress/egress, and evaluating several aspects that Storj doesn’t do currently like uptime (that has to be at least 60% to avoid suspension/disqualification), speed (that Storj does not consider when having a service, although that is absolutely decisive for an eventual customer as they surely don’t want lower speeds than the big boys), available capacity, and letting a SNO actually choose its main angle of operation under that market, there is a significant risk that graceful exits or sudden disconnections happen, medium to long term, affecting Storj growth.
Yes, I know still isn’t there customer-wise, but it will be - having rates manually selected by node operators will be good enough for many customers themselves, even though they would have to pay ingress/egress on some of them. And customers go from one to the other without any problem - no contractual obligation abides them to you, as Storj, or any other similar project. It could take 6 months or 6 years, but if a wave like that happens, how will Storj defend itself as a project with this centralized, market-maker pricing? It can’t. Just can’t.
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I don’t even believe Filecoin and Chia are in the same ballpark as Storj; Filecoin is directed at big markets with substantial configurations, mostly China-related, and rates (afaik) are actually higher than Storj (they should be, considering their requirements), all things considered including the bonuses they give, and actually run much closer to your current commercial services for datacenters; Chia is not even remotely the same kind of product as Storj, as it is a mining-a-coin service, not a rent-your-HDD service, and no customer services are provided, it’s simply a question of supply and demand. The economics behind Chia are so bad that I can’t even believe there are people investing in 480TBs worth of HDDs for that, but here we are. As such,
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Let’s face it: people do not like having to pay to download stuff. Never did, for the last 30 years, from pirated stuff to legal, simply-held-online stuff. They simply aren’t used to it, never will be. The current market makers know that, and offer close-to-unlimited, in-practice-unlimited or truly unlimited ingress, or egress, or both. Storj must be competitive price-wise, but HDDs and SNOs must also be taken in consideration, and I believe a balance is possible, with some adjustments, guaranteeing a lower cost, assuring that those who are trustable and can be trusted stay on the network, and defending yourself against the current market stance.
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In that regard, I frankly believe, considering your current customers (which you’ve outlined so well on the second post), that this would be the best solution for SNOs:
» paying for egress/ingress should be abolished at all; considering current and future market conditions, it seems impossible to keep doing medium-term, as that’s not the trend and I frankly believe it won’t be.
» in predictability grounds, pricing per held TB should be increased, to somewhere between 2.25$ and 2.50$, also to fare for depreciation of HDDs and servicing/manteinance of the SNO;
» uptime should be taken into consideration on pricing, as it is already on data, to assure network health - for example (it’s just an example, could be any uptime higher than that!), a reasonable 93.33% uptime minimum before penalties would mean that, over a 30-day period, a SNO should be able to have a maximum of 48 hours of downtime, which is perfectly feasible to anyone to take care over a 24h regular day, allows to sort things out in an event something’s closed for the day or it happens overnight, and allows up to two times of failure before payouts start to be affected; uptimes at the end of the month under that minimum would exponentially lose their amounts, from like 50% cut for 90% uptime to 100% cut for 87% uptime and lower. If someone disagreed, it would be simply a question of doing better the next month.
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Repair could either be 0$ or 1$ for example (depending on storage pricing and Storj’s will to retain this last item on their pricing structure), and it would be an obligation of the SNO.
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No bandwidth could be limited under the minimum required; if so, payouts would be fully cut (it’s actually easy to implement, quite a simple mathematical comparison with held GB/TBs, uptime [potential storage] and final amount [real held storage] and its deviation). Additionally, further speed improvements would be totally on the SNO responsibility. In a world where the additional cost of providing 10 Gbps, comparing to 1 Gbps, is just 5%, it makes no sense to limit a bandwidth dedicated to a service that provides storage…
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Improving actual storage held, an additional satellite could be opened for customers in Africa/South America, since you are experiencing demand on that area, improving the matters after closing the US2/European-North satellites). It’s actually feasible to implement if you implement it in Brazil, that has the best connections of all local countries afaik, on one of the biggest cities (Fortaleza - state of Ceará would be preferential). That would contribute to a relevant growth of the Storj network.
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STORJ coin could be required to be held as collateral to new entrants, with a fixed amount per TB, effectively rate-limiting new operators and constraining space availability from the get-go, and acting as an incentive to add more storage, should the network need it at any time.
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The Reed-Solomon could be adjusted accordingly with uptime requirements to further improve matters, from 2.7 to 2.0, and that could be an additional penalty factor for earnings.
This would be a gamechanger. I assure you, at a 2.25$ rate, we would be looking at 11.25$ per 5TB for example - and that, in my book, is well paid, regardless of ingress/egress, uptime requirements and external pricing. Storj could as well adjust their market pricing and it would still be different comparing to other services like Sia, Filecoin and Signum, having their space both on the SNO world and on the market itself.
Just an idea. 