Hi All,
I am just wondering if it would be a good idea to be able to buy reputation for a newly started node to be able to get a heads up and start earning profit?
Expading my rack with nodes is pretty darn slow due to reputation build-up at the early stage.
Please notify me if the feature already available.
Thanks
I think that would defeat the whole purpose of vetting. I doubt itâll be implemented.
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Im not aware of any plans to implement a pay-for-reputation model. Just keep good uptime and you will do great!
Vetting is the process it sounds like youâre suggesting Storj provide a work around forâŚ
hereâs a thread Iâd refer you to:
Vetting is the process to BUILD new nodeâs reputation. Itâs a well proven method to weed out the folks that arenât in this for the long haul, or might have bad intentions or misunderstandings of what being a SNO is. I can not see any way that Storj would remove this feature or provide a work around to âbuyâ your way out of the vetting process.
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Better than âbuyingâ would be to deposit a certain amount on your node as a collateral that is gone if you fail your node.
But then we would have the Same problem as SIA or VideocoinâŚ
I prefer to keep the vetting as it treats everybody and every node equally and you donât have to invest any money to start.
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IMO vetting is a good thing for both sides. The time that the satellite uses to vet a new node can also be used by the node operator to test things and figure out how this is supposed to work without really risking anything. If the node fails during that time, nothing was really lost, just create a new one and this time donât make the mistakes.
While I have some suggestions to somehow protect the reputation of an existing node in case of some disaster, I do not think that paying upfront for reputation of a new node is a good thing. It would make Storj look more like a pyramid scheme.
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Black market for vetted nodes doesnât seem to exist yet.
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Buying is an abstraction of the idea (I pay in advance instead of waiting for tokens to accumulated for held back amount), probably something like staking would be more accurate.
Example:
Currently the vetting process is something like:
The new node is being run for a couple of months without payout to be sure that it is in for the long run. The payout amount is held back then returned after it has payed for the costs.
My suggestion is to extend this model, by depositing that held back amount up-front so I donât waste my time for being tested for audits. If the vetted node is not available, then I lose the deposited amount to compensate for network health and repair costs as usual (same without graceful exit).
The reason why I am willing to âpayâ for reputation is that I already know that I am in for the long run and I already have a successfully vetted node running for more than a year, and I can guarantee the same reliability. I am also willing to risk some amount to prove it and start earning earlier. During the vetting period, the network is not supplying the new node with a full bandwidth and data amount not to risk too much but after that the node starts to fill up.
The maintainers of the network has to come up with a solution about depositied amount, time to return periods and percents to incentivise people to use that feature.
Currently the vetting period is a limiting factor for scaling the network up as waiting months to prove reliability is too long and wasting time, bandwidth and unused storage space. Allow that time to be replaced with money, while not risking overall network health.
If you donât agree with this model, then please donât comment. I donât need opposing ideas, just constructive ones to get it done!
Thanks
I donât agree and I donât like being told what to do 
As the network grows, the amount of vetted nodes grow. Since all unvetted nodes receive 5% of all ingress, itâs not so bad. Currently my unvetted nodes get 30% of the ingress of my vetted nodes, because there are not that many unvetted nodes, so the split of 5% overall traffic results in 30% of the ingress of a vetted node.
However, I see the benefit of keeping nodes unvetted for at least a month because if you have a pay to be vetted model, more people might just bail during the first month resulting in higher node churn and higher risk to files.
I can imagine a mode though for existing SNOs to pay to be vetted because they already proved to be in it long-term but STORJlabs argument is that each node location has to be vetted as a reliable SNO might still spin up a node in a new and unreliable environment.
I can see that new people might have a problem with waiting a month before getting the full ingress but even if you can pay to be vetted and get the full ingress, the first up to 3 months you wonât earn anything meaningful (less than $5). Who will pay e.g. $15 upfront for that? And what amount would be fair? It would need to be higher than the usually accumulated held back amount, so probably more like $30.
I think the model of just holding back parts of the income is far superior to the model of paying to be vetted one month earlier than normally.
(For existing SNOs there is actually a different âoptionâ: if you have multiple HDDs, just run 2 nodes per HDD. One big one and a tiny one. If one HDD fails, move the 2nd node from the other harddrive and spin up 2 new tiny nodes. Then you always have a fully vetted backup node with very low held back amount. Is this ok with storjlabs? I donât know 
)
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Iâm afraid the whole point of a forum is to debate ideas and opinons in order to decide whether itâs worth going further or not.
I think most of what I think has been said above, but yeah I donât see why StorjLabs would want to allow âcheatingâ the vetting period by paying, as it does serve the purpose of ensuring the node is reliable enough.
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That is an interesting point of view, I suppose I hadnât though of that. Although, as I stated before, I fundamentally oppose the concept of paying up front for the privilege of being able to do work.
But then this happened:
This is an incredibly rude and shortsighted thing to say.
The point of discussion is to come up with new ideas, not reinforcing the ones you like.
If you donât want opposing views, please speak to the developers directly and donât engage the community.
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BTW, what you can do right now is to have multiple nodes per HDD, so that when you attach a new HDD, you move one of the nodes. Assuming the node was already working for some time, it will likely be already vetted.
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So you suggest to use a dedicated partitioned HDD to incubate nodes to get vetted nodes ahead of demand.
Yeah, that is a nice workaround with some increased management on SNO side.
That is called âproof of stakeâ I guess.
You are absolutely right. I am very sorry. 
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It currently takes about one month for a node to be fully vetted, that is not really a long time. And you basically donât have to do anything. Passive income, what is there to complain about?
How much Traffic you have in one month? To earn money your HDD should be full and at best there should be lots of outgoing traffic. Additionally your node should be at least 10 month old (if I remember correctly), to earn the most when the least amount of escrow is withheld.
So what difference does this one month make?
The advantage of the current model is that is treats everyone equally. It does not matter if you are a newcomer or a veteran. It builds on the principle to trust no one. It does not care who you are, but what you do.
A sidenote: Creating nodes faster, does not create more demand. More nodes means less income for everyone.
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I donât see anything wrong with collateral payment.
Network does not risk anything - a normal vetted node will have maybe a couple of dollars held, while node that paid collateral will have that amount available. On top of that, the held amount for such nodes will increase a lot since they wonât spend the first couple of months getting little to no traffic.
SNO opting to pay collateral will not have to keep the essentially idle node up for over a month before it starts actually earning something.
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My unvetted nodes get 30% of the ingress of my vetted nodes so itâs far from little to no traffic.
Its more about being a trusted node vs not being a trusted node, Just cause you paid collateral payment doesnât make you trust worthy. Its not really about the money its a way to earn trust which is not just given.
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You donât even need partitions. Just a different directory for each node.
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In my experience it was pretty close to 10%. But it doesnât matter. Letâs say your node would normally get 1TB of ingress, the remaining 70% will be 700GB. Getting 700GB 1 month earlier will earn one $10.5 in 10 months, and thatâs before we add egress.
Storj is a business, and businesses are about the money. Vetting is not there to see if a node can be trusted, itâs there to prevent losses from incompetent SNOs. Itâs risk management. If potential losses are covered by a collateral payment, what reason is there to limit ingress to the node?
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