In the Q2 2020 Storj Labs Town Hall presentation we read Customers, customer, customers at timestamp 4m17s for Q3 and Q4 2020.
The last couple of days some threads related to customers or Tardigrade usage popped upped but remained ignored so far by Storj.
So to put it more directly and as Q3 is ending: How is acquisition going? Is there something in progress to make SNOs happy? Something big?
Here in the forum you will most likely get in contact with the developers from storj. They donât ignore the questions. They read them but it is not something that would be important to them. I am simply unable to give you any numbers and I also donât want to learn how to get these numbers. That is not a task for a developer.
Even if there would be something in progress I would not expect a higher payout anytime soon because the number of storage nodes is also growing. So if you can operate your storage node with the current payout that is fine. Keep it running. If you have to shutdown your storage node you should better do it now and donât gamble for a higher payout later on. The rest of us will be happy to fill the gap.
Really? is this an answer from a Storj employee? One of your business partners (yes, that is what a SNO is) is asking a very relevant question about the future growth of the business. Youâre telling him that his question is not ignored by the company because it is at least red by some developers.
And since it is not your task as a developer to answer, youâre happy to tell him to quit if he is not satisfied with his current earnings. Yes, youâre willing to take over his share of business.
Only a developer could come up with such a reaction.
For the ideas &suggestion: a legal ban for all Storj employees to run a node and to earn some money with that.
Ok then I change my answer into the following.
Yes we have big plans. Expect your payout to increase at least 10 times. That is what you wanted to read so let me write that down even if I donât believe it myself.
Thatâs not really what we would like to hear (even if it would be good news).
I believe that we are all curious about whatâs going on on the client side. I understand that itâs not an engineers role to answer that but thatâs not a relevant answer to the question asked by @jammerdan .
A better answer would have been âusually the people who work with clients donât read the forum but Iâll forward your question and weâll see if they have any relevant informationsâ or âwe are not allowed to discuss this kind of subject, youâll know when itâs officialâ.
I also agree with @gs.gs that you saying
isnât a very good reaction.
He/She wasnât even complaining about the low payouts, he/she just asked how things were going on the customer side.
Personally I would be fine with both answers even if itâs a bit frustrating to be in the dark on big projects.
I hope I was clear and that I didnât offend anyone because I sensed some tension in the air(screen).
This site isnt meant to be for clients more for developers and SNOs themselfs who want to be part of the project. If a client needs help then they should probably put in a ticket not come onto a developer forum asking questionsâŚ
Yes I understand that part. My response was more to make sure everyone understands the risk of running a storage node. If you are happy with the current payout then letâs just continue and hope for more. If you are making a loss currently you might want to call graceful exit before burning too much money. I donât like the idea of relying on some marketing statements. Even I as a developer canât tell what will happen in a few months from now. I hope for the best but I prepare for the worst. I believe that is never wrong. Later we might get some responses from the marketing team but there is usually always a gap between a promise and the final results.
I am happy to talk about the current situation. That is something that we can all try out ourself. I would trust these information more then any promises.
I think @TheMightyGreek and I share the same feeling about @littleskunkâ s post, but his way of saying it is so much nicer.
On the topic itself, I believe we all share the same confidence in the concept and technology behind this whole project. But I also believe there is currently an imbalance between supply and demand side of the network. From time to time I read useful suggestions here for certain markets to target. And at the same time, I understand that the company doesnât publicly reveals its sales strategy.
The point is that a lot of SNOs did invest some money in this. Yes, that is against the advice, but please feel some responsibility for it since Storj was sharing the unrealistic earnings calculator earlier. I did the same and I bought some extra hardware. My primary ROI is in the fun and learning, but I am cooperating with a company that is expected to earn some money sooner or later.
Long story short, I feel that Storjâs attitude on commercial initiatives and successes towards SNOs is currently too noncommittal.
You still kinda need to use common sense too you cannot blame storj for people thinking there going to become rich from it, I mean cmon to all those thinking there going to get rich off of mining are in the same boat. MORE VIDEO CARDS = MORE MONEY I CAN MAKE right WRONG.
This is not about getting rich for me, Iâm in for the fun and learning. My point is that Storj is a company and they are responsible for the information they are sharing. I donât think they try to scam us with the calculator, they where just too optimistic. Letâs find a better balance between responsibility and transparency.
Companyâs arenât obligated to just give all information since the information was unknown they donât know how much you will make. Itâs your responsibility to take caution and look after yourself.
What kind of answer is this? I hope you just had a bad day at work because this is unacceptable.
Well, first of all thanks for complimenting my prose haha
I share the same opinion as you, I think storj could make some progress on transparency, be it on development side or the customer side.
From a storj geeks perspective it would be very nice to have more frequent updates regarding the development of the network and new potential partnerships. Not even to speculate on future earnings but just out of curiosity and interest in the project.
However I would also completely understand if Storj doesnât want to share details to avoid all the âhypeâ that comes with announcing potential new partnerships.
I think that right now we are kind of in a gray zone where storj doesnât communicate very much but we donât know if itâs because they donât want to or because they just havenât gotten around to it.
I agree that his answer was a bit too ârawâ but he already clarified his point of view so I donât think we need to keep on going about it.
We are publishing a changelog every 2 weeks. If you watch the github repository you would get it even live. You can see the partnerships in the github repository including any partner that gets added.
We should keep in mind that we are on the Storj side of things, and customers are on the Tardigrade side of things and the information might not flow so freely from one side to the other. Although itâs nice to know whatâs going on from a user base perspective, there is no obligation for Storj or Tardigrade to expose this. They are trying to run a business after all, which probably means not everything can or will be disclosed.
Sometimes it feels like SNOs are more concerned about STORJ making money than storjlabs itself 
Just let storjlabs do their job, Iâm pretty sure they didnât decide that they donât like to make money anymore⌠They will tell us the good news when they are ready for it.
If you look at below category then you will find announcements which highlight different events.
I gather you want more in-depth information about tie-ups/acquistions so I would hereby tag our community manager to shed more light on the topic @jocelyn.
I just think from time to time SNOs need some âmeatâ. We read or have read a lot about potentially great plans like the new eu-north satellite, transfer.sh and we had the Filezilla integration. We also had the almost shoutout like âcustomers, customers, customersâ title in the presentation paving the way for great expectations.
Now we read that transfer.sh is no more. We see that there is not a lot direct user feedback on the Filezilla integration. And just recently we do not see much response on the potential business suggestions that were made on here. This altogether raises the questions on the strategy that Storjlabs is following.
I think from time to time we simply donât want to hear about plans and visions, we also want to see some facts that we are on the right tracks of our journey and it would be helpful to hear some facts about if the strategy is paying off and returning more customers and usage on the network as envisioned. We donât need names and we donât need details of negotiations. But some rough numbers like how many potential clients Storjlabs has serious talks with and if agreements have been signed and what (data) volume this could result in, I think some aggregated numbers would not reveal too much for competitors but would help to make the SNOs a lot happier.
Sorry but I had to laugh a little bit because at first you want facts and a few sentences later you want speculations and visions about how much data volume a certain customer might bring to the networkâŚ
Besides that, publishing data about potential clients and if agreements have been signed would not be helpful. Like if storjlabs has talks with 500 potential customers and signed 3 agreements what does that mean? Some might interpret it as storjlabs being irrelevant, others might expect huge traffic from those 3 agreements even though those clients might need to change their infrastructure first or convince their clientsâŚ
I simply think that SNOs and the public are not the right people to disclose this kind of information to.
We as SNOs are contractors. We are being paid for our services and the usage of our services might vary. Just like any datacenter has a varying usage. Still they donât ask all their clients on future plans just like workers donât ask their CEOs about future plans and the disclosure of agreements and talks with other clients.
We get paid for our services and thatâs it. Let storjlabs worry about making money. They canât keep making losses forever.