The same can be said about the use of local payment cards, such as Sparkasse in Germany, where you “force” customers to use the Sparkasse card to receive premium services or to avoid the 5% additional fee for using a Visa/MasterCard.
So I think you’re trying to boil it down to your claim that tokens are useless. I could just as easily claim that the Sparkasse card is useless, but cardholders would disagree.
So, STORJ tokens are used and used successfully, but of course, you’re free to have your own opinion.
This analogy does not work.
A payment card is a general payment instrument. It is tied to an account, usable across merchants, and valuable because it provides access to an existing payment network.
STORJ, in this context, is a vendor-specific token made attractive by Storj’s own billing incentives.
You are describing a 10% account bonus and waived minimum billing, then calling the resulting usage “natural demand.” That is the part I object to. This is manufactured demand: Storj gives customers better billing terms for using STORJ, then points to that usage as evidence customers want STORJ.
If customers use the token because Storj gives them better billing terms, that is incentivized usage. If operators use it because there is no payout choice, that is captive usage.
That is not the same thing as natural demand for the token.
Ask yourself honestly, if you remove artificial incentives — will customers still choose to pay with token? No? Then token demand is forced, not natural, and costs storj money.
There is not a lot of trying going on. It’s painfully obvious to any outside observer.
These are my opinions, don’t take them as official news.
The main focus of Storj (Inveniam) is the Select Network; it can meet all the required security standards and is the one preffered by the big clients. SN dosen’t rely on the token, as I understand it, maybe I’m wrong.
The Global Network is still alive because of the Storj token. It dosen’t cost Inveniam anything to run it; they have enough tokens to pay us.
The moment Storj token is out of equation, so are we, the Global Network.
They won’t addopt a different payment coin/token because we are not so profitable for them, and they will preffer to shut us down.
We could have a better picture of how much data we store and how important we are, if they would separate the public stats of the GN from the SN, but this request landed on deaf ears.
I predicted that we, the GN, are doomed, the moment they announced the launch of the Select Network. Convincing clients that a wide spread of storage systems with no direct control from Storj Inc, with such a plethora of dubious installments, and no security standards, are a good ideea is a failed experiment.
You need to elaborate on this. How is existence of token helps global network? Note, customers pay in USD for storage. Operators are paid in USD.
All the explanations are in that post, and I won’t elaborate any furter. I added a few more words to make it clearer.
And we are not payed in USD. You can turn it how ever you want on all the faces. Being payed in Storj in a non-custodial wallet, sending the token to a CEX and exchanging the token in USD, is not the equivalent of being payed in USD.
The moment you can’t exchange the token in USD or a stable coin anymore, we are all gone. Inveniam won’t change the payment token, and we won’t accept the token, so we shut down the nodes.
The good thing, though, is that the Storj token is not dying. There is enough volume on the market.
Well, yes. To be precise, you are compensated for your services in USD. $1.5/TB/month storage, $1.5GB/month egress or whatever it is today. Then storj uses your earned USD earnings to buy crappy volatile token you would have never chosen to buy yourself, send that to you. At which point you shall scramble to get rid of asap while it still carries some
value.
No. That would mean storj would need payment network that does not comport value on the way to your wallet. Token will be gone. Not us.
Global network is not alive becuse of token. It’s alive becuse storj needs it for some reason for now. At least that was officially voiced position. There are better ways to shut down public network if storj chooses to do so. They can just say “we are shutting down public network. All data was already migrated to select. Thank you all for service.” This has nothing to do with token.
You are right it was discussed at length.
You are missing the point. Storj is artificially keeping the volume by incentives/subsidies to customers and force-feeding operators. See my posts above. This is unnatural artificial “demand”.
As soon as operators can be paid onto normal banks and customers stop being given 10% kickbacks/bribes for jumping through hoops with tokens — that’s the day the token dies. Becuse nobody wants it but storj. Even storj does not want it but they can’t say it.
I’ll tell you more, customer are getting a grand deal — they are initiating transaction so they can minimize value loss by minimizing time value is allowed to rot inside the token by buying and immediately sending tokens.
Operators are screwed there too — they don’t control when they receive the token nor they are notified in advance. This guarantees their earnings bleed value to volatility for unknown duration, for up to a day.
And everyone is ok with that. Blows my mind.
Thinking about it — I don’t really care about the token. I care about getting the same amount of USD in my bank account as I see earned in my storj dashboard.
Can Storj do that with token? Be my guest. I’ll shut up about the toke the instance it happens.
Right now I consistently receive different from than I earned amount of USD, and this is not acceptable.
In fact, they can pay via ACH to their USA operators. It’s a USA company. ACh transactions are free. Do that on an opt-in basis. “You can be with storj token to ETH20 address or US bank account”.
And I’ll shut up forever on this topic.
Then do the same in EU. I’m sure they have or should have a branch there. This will cover the most. Then solve it for thre rest of the word via multitude of solutions that have been already offered and discussed.
It’s every wrong that a serious company is still playing with fake money. Focus on storage. Use payment processors.
No. It’s usable only where is it accepted. I cannot use a Sparkasse card in Wildberries (just a wild example), they accept only Visa/MasterCard.
STORJ are accepted on any Storj satellite (and perhaps, their partners).
As any other merchant, including Amazon. What’s difference, and why Amazon Gift Cards are acceptable method of payment for Amazon, but STORJ tokens for Storj is not? Makes no sense.
Yes, customers can want STORJ tokens to have benefits when they use Storj services, what’s wrong with that?
Please describe your point of view, what would be it for you, because I’m confused.
Some will continue to pay with tokens, otherwise they would have a card on file. This is a simplest evidence from possible for me.
Only to you, unfortunately.
It was never a main focus, it’s an expensive and complicated product. The Global Network is much better in several aspects (except SOC2 
) than Select. The regional lock requirement can be achieved without Select, we have a lot of customers with EU geofence preferences and without a SOC2 requirement. So, the only a significant differentiator is SOC2 requirement. Perhaps we cannot provide some geofence, if there are not enough nodes (like lock only to a some island or a country with 1-3 nodes, we need at least 80).
No. It’s alive, because there is a demand.
Unlikely it would happen, despite the usage of STORJ tokens. Maybe there could be other payment method, as promised by the whitepaper, who knows. But the Global Network is a best asset of Storj in my opinion. The Select is too expensive and requires much more complicated rules for pieces distribution. Of course, it could be faster for the regional usage, but for the price.
it was planned and still in the backlog. Not enough resources yet.
I disagree with you, but the time will show.
This misses the point. The irrevocable properties of all of those payment instruments and intermediaries is lack of volatility. I fI buy $100 amazon gift card, it is still $100 there after a week.
If I buy storj token for $100 – in a week it may be $30 or $200.
See this:
I’m not against the token as a concept. I’m against using volatile settlement instrument. If storj can stabilize token value – I don’t mind that at all. Storj gets to enjoy free international payments, and value does not evaporate to speculators.
But storj can’t do that. They can’t impact token in any way, except creating captive audiences for it to generate demand. That demand as of today is clearly not enough to stabilize the token enough to make it suitable as a store of value.
Straw man argument. I did not say there is anything wrong. I explained why it has to be done, or the token ceases to exist. Customers vote with their wallet, and if they can save 10% they will. This is exactly why storj offers the discount, and it works.
It does not work for operators, because they don’t know when will the token hit their account and start rotting:
Natural demand would mean customers choose the token without a discount, waived minimum billing, (or forced payout path for operators).
Ok, I’'ll try to concisely express my thought:
- Per Storj whitepaper STORJ is not needed for functioning of the Storj service. Whitepaper allows use of live goats to pay for services and to operators.
- Mention of token has been scrubbed from storj.io and moved to whole another domain. (I guess not to spook away actual customers, but lets not speculate, but it’s a pretty clear move to distance the real actual service from that token crypto mumbo jumbo)
- Storj wants to use STORJ to facilitate payments because it saves them transaction fees and regulatory overhead related to handling FIAT internationally. I disagree with this, but this is paraphrasing your words from earlier topics.
- Storj, just like myself, also understands that volatile settlement instrument is an oxymoron, in spite of what many write here.
- Storj hopes that having larger trading volume of token will help stabilize it to the point of being useful as a settlement instrument. This is not wrong, but volume won’t come out of thin air.
- But nobody else cares about the token but storj. There must be tangible reasons for customers to use token. Therefore, storj needs to incentives or force people to use token. They cannot force customers, or they will have none, so they lure them them a discount/bonus. Operators are captive audience to they get away with paying them with token unconditionally, no compensation Again, no malice, very logical move, (albeit very exploitative – but that’s my opinion).
Yes, this are discounts working exactly as Storj intended to help increase token trading/usage volume. It’s evidence that this is working. This in itself is not a problem.
I doubt it.
TLDR: I’m not against STORJ. I am against volatile settlement instrument. Fix volatility, nobody will have an issue.
I am sorry to intercept here, but that is a bad example cause “Sparkassen card” is a Visa Card. And one of the most accepted cards in Germany. I think you mean the old payment system “maestro” which doesn’t exist anymore
Thanks for clarifications. This is encouraging. As long as I don’t have a clear picture of the usage, I may get things wrong. I hope I made a bad prediction also. I like running storagenodes and getting payed for, no matter the coin. 
Perhaps it’s because I lived in Germany more than 10 years ago. Back then, I couldn’t use my Sparkasse card at some large chain stores, and I couldn’t pay with my Visa card at the small grocery stores near my home—they only accepted Sparkasse or cash. So I had to use both.
Perhaps this program: The next evolution of STORJ tokenomics: Introducing buybacks and staking to stabilize network supply and fuel network growth. can stabilize token value?
Nothing can stabilize the token value. The concept of using a settlement instrument with fluctuating value is the root problem and wrong from the beginning. Next problem was that Storj never really marketed the token and make it usable for other projects. Storj has missed the chance to position itself and the STORJ token as a useful tool for payment settlments.
Now other companies are doing exactly that. And for exactly the reason to avoid volatility, they make use of stablecoins. These combine the advantages of crypto with the value of real money. It is a no-brainer that this is the future if one must rely on crypto.
Maybe, but is it still on the table? Or is just forgotten? I don’t see any news about staking, and already passed one year since that announcement.
Unfortunately I do not have any information about that. Since it’s not removed, I guess it’s still on the table.
The staking page you posted contains a link to the wallet used. It hasn’t been touched and no buyback tokens moved into it for almost 4 months now.
Staking has fallen off the table.
Moreover, in case of storj token, to stabilize the value in reality means “to eliminate drift with respect to USD”. Not EUR or RUR or any other currency, gold, enriched uranium, or sea shells. USD specifically. Why? Because service is priced in USD and operator compensation is in USD. Otherwise it will drift when USD drifts from the chosen benchmark.
So, essentially, to keep current payout and pricing in USD, storj will need to reinvent USDC: to make STORj ubiquitous as a payment method for everything and USD denominated.
But since storj is in storage business, not in stablecoin business, wasting resources on marketing and operating a stablecoin is (or should be) out of scope for storj.
Another alternative if storj wants crypto is to fundamentally change denomination: charge customers and pay operators in etherium or bitcoin or any other stable-ish large by volume crypto currency. But this would be the case of cure being worse than the ailment:
- customers paying and operator earning and transactions sending in same currency eliminates drift
- But the chosen currency must itself be stable enough otherwise it will make the issue worse.
Solution is obvious. Keep USD based pricing. Use USD denominated stablecoin for handling payments, or better yet, save resources and pay someone to handle payments for you, and focus on storage.
(I don’t know why storj is pushing the token so much. The text on that website makes no sense.
While decentralized networks promise to revolutionize data storage, many struggle with driving network demand and token economics fail to align network growth with token value.
Mixes cold and green. Decentralized storage networks don’t need token economics. The whole premise is wrong. Focus on driving demand. Drop the crypto cospay)
Oof.
TLDR — nobody cares what binance thinks.
Separately:
- search before you post
- Post link to the source and not some rinky-dink yellow press.