lets not speculate, time will show us, then will make decisions.
4 Likes
2 Likes
You might not be in the strong position that you would like to be in:
In German unfortunately: Krankes System: Das starke Machtgefälle
Some auto translations:
The brutal methods used by car companies against suppliers
The strong power imbalance
The list of unsightly practices that continue to dominate the industry is long:
- Car manufacturers simply pass on suppliers’ design sketches to third parties and ask them to counter-offer.
- Corporations refuse to pay suppliers for ordered development services such as samples or pre-series parts.
- PS giants are leaving suppliers to foot the bill for special tools that are only needed to manufacture the parts ordered.
- Corporations repeatedly question the agreed prices during the term of the contract, which is tantamount to a breach of contract.
- Car manufacturers force suppliers into long-term contracts without being able to renegotiate if conditions change, such as a sharp rise in raw material prices or a noticeable reduction in the agreed quantities.
- Car manufacturers automatically deduct money from suppliers in the event of complaints without any agreement.
- Corporations are forcing suppliers to accept liability for the full functionality of installed parts, even though these were produced according to the manufacturer’s specifications.
I happened to get to know a purchasing person at a large German car manufacturer. He talked a bit about his work and summed it up as basically his company can do whatever it wants. They can define every detail from the price calculation up to how things need to be packaged so that its optimal for the production plant. If the number of non working components are above a set limit the supplier has to pay fines. And even for very old parts for which the manufacturer guarantees parts availability for older car series when a customer requires such a spare part and it is no longer in stock, the supplier has to re-setup the production line to manufacture this specific part if there is no other option. Of course at his own cost.
This seems perfectly reasonable.
The translated issues in your quote above not so much 
More cold backup data. High uploads with almost no downloads and a short TTL (customers perspective)
I would assume that process will take a month or so. First not all nodes will watch their nodes every day. Some might notice the higher usage after the payout arrived and checkout whats going on basically a month after the fact. Also not everyone will be able to plugin an extra hard drive. Some operators will have to go back to the drawing board first and come up with a new plan. And ofc the new hardware needs to be ordered and delivered. So no I would not count that all this happens within the upload cycle. It will help after the upload cycle for future growth but for the first upload cycle I rather calculate with the worst case with no extra hard drives.
7 Likes
Finally something that we can work with. I think that would be a perfect use case for storj since the numbers check out.
Completely agree with that.
I added a bit that I had forgot.
It simply shows that they dictate how things have to be done. No matter if their requests fit the workflow, machinery, personal, logistics that the supplier has.
They have their production process in their plant and force their suppliers to deliver the components exactly the way how they can be used in production with minimal effort.
Of course it is reasonable from their side, but it shows that the supplier has no chance to have it done in a different way that better suits him. Normally you would say, ok the customer pays for the extra work and cost of his special requests. But no, the additional cost to accommodate the client the supplier has to bear.
Yes, they make this condition when make contracts and supplier give price for that conditions.
So all this thins should be imbedded in price.
2 Likes
I’m not saying you are wrong. I’m saying that if the profit $ > expenses $ => net in. We sign the deal. if profit $ < expenses $ => net out. We don’t sign the deal.
As Vadim said. 100 million water pumps with a guaranteed purchase by the client = $40/pump. 100 million of “maybe we’ll buy it, oh and you need to stock up an additional 10mil pumps” = $60/pump
Well, we can get into a very lengthy discussion about the merits of capitalism but it seems reasonable to me for the company to want a product that exactly fits their needs in order to keep their operating costs low and efficiency high.
The suppliers have the option to go sell somewhere else, otherwise it’s their job to supply the customers with a product that they require. I see no problem with that.
BUT this needs to be done ethically from both sides for “capitalism” to work, especially from the side who has the most power. And delaying payments, breaching terms of contract and withholding payments for spurious reasons seems unacceptable to me and should be dealt with vigorously.
1 Like
Not really. They have huge statistics with averages and know their company and the suppliers company very well. They know exactly, that the average share for packaging and transportation is let’s say 0.075% of the product price. Now when the supplier tries to set a higher cost for the packaging special requests, he simply don’t receive it. The purchaser says the calculated company average is 0.075% and this is what we will pay. Next component…
Of course. But if their special liking causes additional cost, then they normally would have to pay for that extra handling.
The case is with such clients with overwhelming power you cannot simply charge them for that.
What you do is you lay-off some people and hire part time personnel that you pay lower.
I am reducing my storage space now because a lot has been deleted (nearly 3/5 has been deleted) . I then add storage again if necessary. So, I can now turn off hard drives and save electricity.
3 Likes
This is a perfect example of the car manufacturer analogy. The supplier is ramping down production because the client (car manufacturer) isn’t purchasing the whole “agreed upon” production run. That’s how math works out in real life and we are seeing that happen.
For all the time Storj has been running, SNOs have expanded faster than usage (I don’t think we’ve used more than 50% of capacity: even when giving out tons of space for free?). If Mitsos’s number are correct… then after years of ingress only 20% of nodes are full: why would that pattern change now?
The concern is that SNOs have kept ahead of expansion since 2017… but if you start paying them more money now… they’ll fall behind? 
1 Like
@Roxor quick, change that
to “but if you start paying them more money now by utilizing more space” before we get riots about proposing payout rate increases. We had hell last time convincing people that if storj makes money, we make money.
PS.
The numbers are what the satellite is reporting.
Why do you believe the pattern will never change?
So where are we at now?
There’s no evidence Storj can get ahead of the expansion capabilities of SNOs. They haven’t done it over the last 7+ years. They haven’t done it while dropping payouts rates several times. Watching all that… since launch… why do you believe that pattern will change?
It’s certainly possible. But… is it likely? Is it probable?
There’s a huge amount of spare capacity that can be quickly switched to Storj if the money is there (like the Chia project has 500x the space already online). The idea that SNOs won’t soak up all the paid data available… seems unlikely. If they’ve been expanding all along there’s no reason to believe they’ll stop now…
1 Like
More importantly, why do you believe the sun isn’t going to shine tomorrow? Past history shows that it will.
1 Like
Both prespective are valid and have their points.
Yes, Storj so far has always had capacity available. There is a balance between the % of used capacity in the network and the growth in total capacity. If the current space isnt used, people wont want to add more drives. If people saw that current usage was high, they would be more inclined to add more capacity to the network as it would fill up faster. Offer induced by demand (of course, even this has its limits).
Given this, sure, the most probable thing for the current state of the network would be that as usage increases, SNOs will add more capacity, but the amount and the timing of this cannot be predicted, and much less relied upon when signing up new customers.
When working in new deals, it is always better to be conservative. The current capacity is all we have, cannot predict future capacity. As such, ensuring that the current capacity and bandwidth is enough to stafisty the customers needs seems like the perfect way to approach it.
Keep in mind that for any company, its reputation is the most important thing. If Storj starts to offer deals, and then cannot actually go through them because capacity & bandwidth did not grow fast enough, it could at best result in losing the customer, and at worse losing a lot of current and future customers.
“We can afford to lose money - even a lot of money. But we can’t afford to lose reputation - even a shred of reputation.” - Warren Buffett
2 Likes