Hey @pangolin,
Haha, I can assure you I’m human! 
I do use ChatGPT to help improve the readability and comprehensiveness of my posts. It helps me structure my thoughts more clearly and efficiently, and it also ensures I avoid any grammatical mistakes. 
Do you think it’s a good idea, or would you advise against it? Personally, I find it makes the communication smoother and more professional.
But as you may assume, some detected it as an AI 
So, maybe this would be useful, but it removes human errors only in words, although not in conclusions.
But it’s up on you of course
I often use ChatGPT too to increase text quality. English is not my first language so it’s sometimes hard to explain things for me.
It definitely helps a lot and is in good use here.
The answers are written from a human and just pimped with ai.
I am definitely pro AI.
As one of the founders of the above named company I created an account on the Storj forum, to add some in my opinion important things to this thread.
Our users have a storage requirement between 80 GB and 2 TB, typically between 80 and 350 GB per user. With encryption, the storage requirement increases, I guess around 12 - 17%. It is necessary to encrypt the data with minimum 256Bit to ensure user’s privacy.
The idea is as follows: The backed-up data is stored on the machines of other users. As a Langmeier Backup user, you can allocate a section of your hard drive for the encrypted backups of other users.
In return, you receive coins from the blockchain.
The system operates as a peer-to-peer network, similar to Napster, but with an incentive for the users. When you back up your data to the network, it is distributed across multiple users and duplicated several times, since not all users are always online.
The incentive for users to provide storage space on their hard drives is earning coins from the blockchain.
The question is whether this can be implemented via the Storj blockchain.
What do you guys think about it?
And what are your thoughts on this idea in general if I may ask?
Does anyone know of an existing implementation of this idea, or would anyone be interested in collaborating with our developers to realize this?
Best regards,
Urs
Sounds like a bad idea.
This is what SNOs do.
You could probably run your own satellite exclusively for your customers:
And then manage payouts via smart contracts or something.
But generally it sounds like you are having a false impressen on what Storj is.
We have seen this on this forum before.
Someone having some plans and instead of contacting the company they need to work with (when even told by the company staff), they are trying to work around the forum users, trying to get their e-mail addresses, trying to offer them some collaboration, asking them clearly senseless questions etc., and also admitting to be using AI to “improve” the responses.
Very very very suspicious.
There have been a few Cloud Storage companies that tried this (users share local space, to earn Cloud space) but I’m not sure if any survived. One of the largest was Symform - they’ve seemed to have rebranded so you’ll need to search for pre-2016 reviews. I only remember them because I participated.
Right now Storj clients can do something similar by themselves. With the 10% bonus for paying-in-tokens… you need to have shared/used about 2.5TB of local space to earn 1TB of Storj Cloud space. Langmeier could rebrand/reskin the Storj ‘node’ software with your own baked-in payment info (or otherwise hard-code it) so Langmeier customers earned Cloud space as well. The node software already reports usage… so Langmeier could always see how much space their customers have earned vs. what they were using.
And that could all work without exposing Langmeier customers to crypto/tokens. Maybe they’d only see what was used-locally vs. used-in-Cloud as numbers in a dashboard… but under the hood Langmeier would be earning Storj tokens from all those customer node installs… and paying for their corporate Cloud space in the same tokens… and selling the extra tokens as profit.
You’d need to find a sharing ratio that’s worth it as a business case: perhaps if do-it-yourself sharing needs 2.5:1 you’d need to use 5:1 or something. And realize if Langmeier is sharing that rebranded/preconfigured ‘Storj Node’ software that there would be a support burden when customers inevitably bodge something up.
But I’ve been talking about it like Langmeier was doing it all themselves (as the Storj node is open-source, so they could). As a partnership… perhaps Storj could handle not only the Langmeier-rebranded-client work, but also any support work as well (even with a Langmeier-branded support portal). And as a company… Storj could even take the tokenomics out of it and just use $USD. So Storj manages the branded-software and support… and just mails Langmeier a cheque every month. In return Langmeier actively persues customers to install that client and share space: knowing that because of the the 5:1 sharing ratio every install makes them money (in addition to anything they make as regular backup revenue).
So Storj gets more nodes-in-the-world with space they can sell, and it improves overall throughput of their network. Langmeier gives their backup customers extra features no competitor offers (effortless/optional use of local storage to offset Cloud Backup bills), and still makes some margin on that used-Cloud-space… but offloads the burden of actually providing all the infrastructure for that backup space themselves.
As a summary - I would suggest to contact our Sales and conclude a contract to support your initiative, I would assure you, it would be more productive.