While I don’t expect Storj to host nodes themselves in data centers, node operators will do that and already do.
Chia itself has shown that a significant growth of storage needs broke supply for home customers, but not for professional data centers. They can respond to changes in demand faster and that’s where my reasoning comes from.
Have you seen all the cardboard-based bitcoin “data centers”? Well… have you seen the almost-cardboard-based OVH “data center” that burned recently? People already have done that as soon as the demand is there.
That’s not the case now and that will not be the case if Storj needs to grow. While I do expect changes in incentive structure, if Storj wants to reach even just mere exabytes, this is not going to happen on just storage people happen to have already, because it’s not going to be enough to answer demand peaks.
Besides, I wonder how many current nodes would disappear if the incentive changed against them.
Regarding the topic itself, consider the following. Hetzner has close to 9k /24 blocks (source). Within their pricing structure you will see that it is possible to rent servers with between 64-224 TB of non-redundant disk space at 1.375 USD/TB/month — assume that’s their operating cost after all the wages, hardware cost, power usage, cooling, etc. Assume 5% egress monthly, which is what we’re already observing, making each TB stored bring 1.5 USD + 1 USD in Storj payments. This means that Hetzner would earn 1.125 USD/TB/month hosting nodes on their own hardware. If they chose to host 9k nodes exposing 224 TB disk space each, all of them on a separate /24 block, that’s 2 exabytes profiting (not just revenue) 2MUSD monthly. This is not even specializing the hardware to Storj needs, just using what they offer off-the-shelf.
They’re not doing it because Storj is way too small for that yet. And Hetzner’s far from the largest data center operators out there.
That’s the numbers I base my beliefs on.