Announcement: Changes to node payout rates as of December 1st 2023 (Open for comment)

[Alexey]

You may vote for that question with a heart

[BrightSilence]

While it sucks that the drop for egress is significant (and certainly bigger than I was hoping for), I do recognize that especially for older nodes, the actual payout difference won’t be that big. And I appreciate the promise that payouts are no longer expected to drop further. At least we know what we can count on now.

@mattventura

Where are these numbers coming from? I have 7 nodes, and the lowest ratio on any of them is 1:2 download to storage payment. Half of them are about 1:1, some a bit over.

Payout totals I would guess. Younger nodes will be hit harder by this if looking at the ratio. My older nodes will not feel a big impact at all. I do hope they do something with the held amount to compensate new node operators more, as the impact is felt there much more and they already make so little due to held amount.

@penfold

I now expect to see further centralisation to Russia and more European nodes to leave at these rates - perhaps even @BrightSilence will remove some of his nodes at these prices.

As mentioned above, the impact is quite minimal for my payouts. Though I have been reevaluating some of the smaller HDD’s I’ve been running for a while. At this point my intention is to at some point migrate those to larger HDD’s which will have a better cost/income ratio. I don’t plan on stopping them, although I know I’m running some at a loss currently. They were already running at a loss prior to this change. I’m just playing the long game there to avoid having to go through vetting/held amount when larger HDD’s become available to me.

@penfold

There has been substantial change in the countries with node growth and node loss since the pricing changes started.

It’s definitely worth for Storj to look into that further as well in addition to the numbers they have provided. Enough nodes, but clustered in a few geographic areas would not be good either, for both performance and reliability.

@arrogantrabbit

To me it sounds irrationally greedy. “If I can’t use these resources — then nobody will!”

It’s not greedy to want some compensation for the efforts you put in. But I think small compensation is justified for the reasons you mention. You can still run a profit almost everywhere in the world, if the only cost you have is the power usage of the spinning disk. In my case even enough to buy and additional HDD from time to time. However, at this point you do kind of have to be willing to donate your time setting things up. If I would have been paid my normal salary for the hours I spent on Storj, I would have made a lot more money than just running my nodes. But it’s a learning experience and fun for enthusiasts. And also, I spend much more time on it than I have to to just run the nodes. I helped a friend set up a node on their NAS years ago and they never looked back at it and it has been quietly making money for them in the background on unused resources. I doubt they have even checked their wallet in years and it’s not in their way. So they’s probably be happy to see +/-$200 they didn’t know they had. (It’s a small node)

@Alexey

@AiS1972

BUT! Let’s consider the option that the free space has really run out - how in this case will the storj be able to stimulate the addition of space on the nodes by operators?

This argument has used so much times, and never confirmed…

Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But if an exabyte scale customer comes along, Storj would have no choice but to tell them to look elsewhere right now. Same for the larger petabyte scale customers. It would require quite a bit of organic growth to be able to accept those with open arms with the current strategy. I do think that’s a downside of this approach, but it might be the only way to balance price vs pay at the moment. There’s nothing wrong with growing slow and steady, but that’s what it will be for the foreseeable future as it stands.

[unrealSpeedy]

So in Fact the „only“ change is the egress-Rate to 2$?

[Pentium100]

@Alexey

Storj gives a lot of space and egress for free - remember the free tier? And also some non-profit organizations like the Internet archive or documental materials about crimes.

While I have an account, I do not use it, other than sometimes doing a test out of curiosity (when Storj announces that the latency or something was improved). If running a node did not pay any money I would consider doing it if I got a service in return. While I sort-of do, I do not use it. Using a torrent analogy, it’s like downloading and seeding a movie I never plan to watch.

I am running my node and I will continue to do it, since most of the work is already done - the VM runs OK, the hardware runs OK, monitoring works and I only need to update the node once in a while.
However, I don’t think I would create a new node, even if I had another good internet connection or if my current node was disqualified. Very low traffic means it would probably be a year until I saw even $10.

Basically, it something is a collaboration for a common goal, I can do stuff for free. If people rake in profits out of my work, then I want a cut , which can be in the form of money or services that I use.

@Alexey

This is what is happening in Germany, if you want to utilize an old car.

]You have to pay a tax to use an old car? They plan something like that here but it is super unpopular, because it is basically a regressive tax.

[Alexey]

Yes, I think so. And for me personally it has a little impact, but my nodes are old and they still pays my bills, so this is why I want to see an impact on other SNOs

[Alexey]

@Pentium100

You have to pay a tax to use an old car?

Yes, you must and it’s rated based on the age. And also you need to pay for impact on ecology, if your car produces waste (CO² mostly) worse than a standard…, like a diesel.

[Toyoo]

@mattventura

Personal numbers aside, egress should be well-compensated IMO.

What Storj Inc. should observe now is not the number of nodes dropping out, but egrees bandwidth. I suspect there will be nodes that instead of dropping out, will just heavily shape traffic against storage nodes.

@mattventura

For example, Comcast’s second-fastest cable plan is 400 down, 15 up, with a 1.2TB cap. An SNO would need to pay them $30/mo to uncap it

Oh dear. I haven’t seen plans that bad in my part of the world. For example, the “worst” downlink:uplink ratio we have here is around 10:1.

I don’t think we should optimize the whole network for just one geographic region’s economic constraints though.

@penfold

It certainly makes it uneconomic for me to add any further space to Storj

It’s, frankly speaking, still a good proposition for me. My operation is, let say, “worth the effort” for around 1.2 USD/TB, maybe even a little less. Right now it is 1.43 USD/TB for me, and after the change maybe 1.35 USD/TB. Good enough, and I’m still ready to add a new HDD for Storj at that price.

@penfold

Since the whole model is supposedly “use what you have” the 30 day period is not sustainable for me. If I will need the space I will generally need to use it within 7 days.

Micronodes, I tell you!

@Vadim

I made several time suggestions to Storj to make some kind of traffics nodes that will handle gateway traffics, this will lower Storj expenses very much.

And I think Storj Inc. stated it’s not a simple thing to do.

@AiS1972

what will happen when a large client suddenly arrives and the space on the network runs out

Someone will quickly set up nodes in cheap datacenters like Hetzner’s. I estimated the costs to be below 1 USD/TB to run nodes at scale there. Decentralization won’t be as good, but it will handle the traffic.

[Ruskiem]

@arrogantrabbit

Especially if it pays back for the trouble.

• but it don’t. That’s the point.
  it’s all about fair share of profits, and feeling of justice.
  "Am i being ripped off? " - a SNO might think.

no body wants to help someone who is taking for it self unjustly.
And most of us is here in large to help and contribute to a good cause despite the money.

At least until ...

… it is good cause, pushing technology forward in first place,
and if one, who is putting the effort into checking that his nodes work well, often every day, taking time to discover and report bugs, find out that the company would be taking 70% of the revenue for all that to itself and leaving him with only 30%, then he might feel bad about that, or exploited, as You can see in that or another SNOs not necessary irrational behavior, @arrogantrabbit .
Especially if things used to be that companys, that coordinates the efforts takes usually smaller percentage of the whole income, according to the saying:
“I’d rather earn 1% from the efforts of 100 people than 100% from my own efforts.”
I’m afraid here it looks more like:
“I’d rather earn 70% from the efforts of 100 SNOs than 100% from my own efforts.”
IF True, doesn’t look the best at the moment, just to answering You.

Will STORJ inc. keep prices for customers at 7$/TB egress then?
and give 2$ to SNOs and keep 5$?
Because now it is at 6$ to SNOs, and 1$ to STORJ inc.
What is too little for STORJ inc. as well
so i come up here with TLDR: better balance proposition in short
Soooo will there be also cut in prices for customers?
that’s the main question that should be asked.

@arrogantrabbit

The fact is — most snos don’t care about payout, as evidenced by available data.

i think not, i think it just shows that people don’t track, don’t check,
because they are here not so much for only money, to be so 1 or 2$ seeking here or there.
and if they will finally check, that doesn’t mean they will be happy.
Or they will be so unhappy to leave, as we are here rather to contribute.
But that doesn’t mean it feels good, if company could share more with us, but it don’t.
And i mean it could if rearrangement be done in direction for example like from my proposition.
And We are beta pilots here, in order to growth globally the company needs more than just enthusiasts like us. I am afraid that the current revenue sharing will not take.

Evidence for people don’t track is for example in this topic:
4 TB node has been full the past few months, still only 2.17 TBm storage paid
Turned out that nodes were underpaid for storage as far back as 7 months.
(but storage payment in 1,5$/TB didn’t matter back then, if egress was yet payed 20$/TB.)

i checked my nodes, turned out to be true for me too,
my full 7TB node didn’t got payed for the real data it was holding:

because the payment is being made upon a stat, that need a full filewalker function to complete its action, which means counting all the files which my node has ~16 million, mostly small files, and it takes 6-7 days even with enough RAM (i allocated 7GB, i can do 14GB but it seems it just does not get any faster in small files counting despite more RAM)
it’s normal PC, quite modern, win10, storagenode GUI.
(processor AMD 4700GE, 8/16 cores,
DDR4 3200MHz RAM, sata III, 8TB HDD HelioSeal WD Ultrastar)
i takes 6-7 days for windows to count the files as well,
so its not any STORJ app disadvantage here:

The problem is, that filewalker seems to be unable to finish its work in one sitting over that 6-7days. I noticed any shutdown, which can happen spontaneously, and unexpected, (i found that in logs to my surprise), just cancels it’s work, and when it got to start again, it starts from 0. Seems he don’t remember when he finished, making it unable to finish, if just one restart of storj servcie will occur over those 6-7 days, in this case.

@jammerdan

Now finally it seems the filewalker has come to an end. I don’t have exact times, but surely it was 38hrs +.
Looking at the metrics I can tell, that the filewalker is putting a lot of stress on the node. It is unbelievable. Load metrics are now 1 tenth of when filewalker was running and I could increase the concurrency again. But wait… when I do that and restart the node, the filewalker will come back.
This filewalker design is

That’s @jammerdan quotes, from this topic: here

So im being paid for 4,81TB, and my nodes actually holds 6,41TB, and the dashboard shows 6,98TB. That’s all because filewalker wasn’t been able to finish its work without interruption over course of 6-7 days.

I’m telling all this, because even enthusiast like me, just found that recently, after 7 months,
(i could raise this to attention sooner: filewalker improvement needed asap (as of 26.10.2023)

I’m telling this example because its important for the topic,
because 1-2$ back or forth per disk, per month didn’t matter back then,
if egress for SNOs was payed 20$/TB in Mar, Apr, May 2023.
After Jun 1, 2023 it was 6$/TB.
But now, with plans from Dec 1, 2023 for 2$/TB
NOW, that 1,5$/TB alone, for storage space, suddenly becoming vital for SNOs.

So if STORJ inc. showed, its going to cut egress too,
going into direction of low egress pay, similar like my TLDR: better balance proposition in short
(and STORJ employes was raising concerns that low egress payout would make SNOs to cap theirs egress, and now STORJ inc. is doing 2$/TB, that is low. One of similar conversation in topic:

@Alexey

By the way payouts only for used space without payments for egress will likely incentive to build huge setup (of course with /24 circumvent) with bare availability only to pass audits, something like several kbps for egress.

which i replied: well then just a proper audit mechanism should be implemented (And Alex pointed that a way to do it, even happened to be proposed by @BrightSilence already: Distribute audits across storagenodes)

@Ruskiem

“with bare availability only to pass audits, something like several kbps for egress.”
Making a Storj node, one agree to given requirements:

One processor core
Minimum 550GB of available disk space
Minimum of 2TB of available bandwidth a month
Minimum upstream bandwidth of 5 Mbps
Minimum download bandwidth of 25 Mbps
Keep your node online 24/7

5 Mbps that gives max 1,5TB of uploaded data in a month.
if that’s the requirements, then the node has to be audited also for this 5 Mbps parameter, every day.

if that’s needed, in order to secure STORJ profitable future for everyone, then isn’t it WORTH doing so?

(Above quotes from this Thread here)

and now, STORJ inc. is cutting egress to 2$/TB
what about prices for customers?

(@Vadim i belive You got that wrong, hetzen egress is 1,19€/TB for customers, 20TB is just a free traffic, according to official website:
“With at least 20 TB of included traffic, you’ll have lots of bandwidth for your projects, regardless of which Hetzner Cloud package you choose. But if you need, you may add more for an extra € 1.19 a month per TB.” from Official hetzner site

So dear STORJ inc.
if You are lowering to 2$/TB, now the topic of measuring whether nodes meet the required parameters is key important, to indeed prevent some from capping egress traffic (upload from nodes).

After it’s done, i think STORJ inc. could lower the prices for customers, similar to my proposition, that would in my opinion strongy moves the usage of whole STORJ network for customers and level up STORJ’s popularity and profits to it’s new HIGHS for STORJ inc. and for SNOs both!

[Nodemansland]

This is disappointing, really hope this doesn’t backfire.

[BrightSilence]

@Ruskiem

because the payment is being made upon a stat, that need a full filewalker function to complete its action

This is incorrect. Payouts are based on satellite side stats. You don’t need to run the filewalker. You get paid for what your node is supposed to be storing for satellites either way. Most likely your issue is because garbage collection doesn’t finish on time either and data that your node isn’t supposed to have anymore remains behind. Possibly including the data from decommissioned satellites.
Please look into this topic to clean up data for the removed satellites: How To Forget Untrusted Satellites

[Ruskiem]

unfortunately, thats not the conclusion i come to, because i checked node stats and logs months back,(i have all the logs from past 3 years) and the problem with stat: “Average Disk Space” is on every nodes i checked, back to 7 months, if i remember correctly, in Mar, May, Jun 2023 there was no problem with decommissioning satellites, as of decommission was announced as soon as in Jun 15:

Announcement: Storj to shut down europe-north-1 and us2

Hello Storage Node Operators! Important: This includes an announcement that we will be shutting down two satellites: europe-north-1, and us2. See below for details. First of all thank you all so much for your engagement on the forum. The discussions up to now about SNO payouts and infrastructure costs have been productive and have given us insight into your perspective, which has strongly influenced the path we are following. To continue down this path we have decided to sunset two of our non…

But i will investigate further, as of i just realized the problem, thank You,
i will update my findings in proper thread,not here, but i linked it in my post above.
I used it as an example, of how much people don’t check the current node payouts, despite the report here states that people accepted cuts, because they didn’t leave, and didn’t GE in mass. And how much is the 1,5$/TB per storage now important in face of the decision of cut from 6$/TB to 2$/TB egress, and it should go along with price cuts for customers as well.

[Pentium100]

I think that the decentralization idea is failing a bit. If most customers use the edge services, then the decentralization aspect is pretty much pointless and the only way to compete is by lowering the price (and bigger companies with their own datacenters can probably lower the price even more).

While Storj was never fully decentralized (the satellite being a center point, however many servers make up one satellite), using the native uplink at least makes some sense - you get built-in encryption and the data is distributed among many nodes, hopefully increasing the bandwidth. All that is lost once you use the edge services.

[deathlessdd]

I expect even more of a cut next year cause they expected more nodes to drop off but didnt, So expect further reductions in prices. My nodes are on full solar now so they are running for free power so I will continue to run them until they die.

[deathlessdd]

I have enough battery for my nodes to run a month on battery alone…

[unrealSpeedy]

In Germany its something special

Selling Power from small Solar-Installations is a hell of buerocracy and taxes.
So you Want to use as much as possible by yourself xd

[unrealSpeedy]

Wait. Storj shuts down the satellites, leaves the Trash-Data on our nodes and we have to tidy up this manually by a command? Really?

[deathlessdd]

Nah there not free but There not for storj either but powers my servers during the day and night storj nodes just happen to benefit from it. There high cycle batteries LFP

[zip]

Would like to learn more, if you can please share even over the DM. Thank you.

[zip]

@arrogantrabbit

It also makes no sense to pay for capped connection in the first place. 1.2TB is peanuts today. If you use data in any nontrivial way you’ll blow though it. My data usage is 6-10TB/month for the past few years.

We had caps, now we don’t, but I do work around MPLS and see the trend of commercial entities moving from MPLS to cheap Internet circuits using SDWAN on top. The company that owns the network infrastructure and was selling MPLS, with many cases managed equipment, looses 90% of the profits in many cases by that move. Customer saves lets say 50% as 40% will go to third party SDWAN integrators, equipment and SDWAN licenses.
I’m not sure this will go unnoticed by the stock holders of these companies owning the network infrastructure and there won’t be a slow push to somehow limit this… let me say abuse of these cheap Internet circuits.
I see it daily as they are trying to find a new ways to save expenses so dividends can grow each year, and I’m afraid they might start doing caps unless you buy a commercial grade access from them, and that won’t be cheap. Around here they are already saying they will have to rise prices of the access despite them having less expenses than a year ago and the reason is stock holders.

[Knowledge]

Even after this reduction in payout, the SOC2 side remains cheaper. The balance had to be made to bring them closer to equal pricing.

There is zero discussion or interest in removing the public side of the Storj network. Nobody is looking to do that.

Long term, some payouts may improve as value added services are sold to customers. This has a ways out yet, but there is talk that SNO’s could receive additional gains from this at some point.

Discussions about SNO’s scoping traffic to reduce Egress as a potential problem were discussed but because Egress is not that impactful, it was not viewed as something most SNO’s will bother with.

Storj reached out to large node operators (On the public side) and discussed these changes with them. The feedback was such that they would continue to earn after these changes were made.

Reduction in nodes is expected, but is not likely to be substantial.

New node operators taking a long time to earn is a concern but options still being discussed as it has been a concern for a while, however right now we don’t need additional node growth. Long term we want to make things more balanced if possible.

The above is how I understand things and is subject to change.