I’ve seen several node operators suggest accepting little or no payment to help keep the network alive. Frankly, I find that absurd. This entire situation began with Inveniam’s financial maneuvering, while other people are still finding ways to profit from it.
Node operators are at the very bottom of this process, yet somehow we are the only ones volunteering to work for free. That is embarrassing.
So here is my alternative proposal: all Storj employees resign, and together we launch a new spin-off. For the first few months, both the former staff and node operators work for free while we win back Storj’s existing customers and rebuild the business.
Once the new company becomes sustainable, compensation can gradually return to normal for everyone.
If working for free is truly the solution, then the sacrifice should be shared equally—not pushed exclusively onto node operators.
By immediately offering to work for free, we have put ourselves in a position of weakness, even though node operators are the engine that keeps this network running.
Storj did not fail to grow because the underlying infrastructure lacked performance or scalability. The technology worked. The network worked. The node operators delivered. The problem may instead have been inadequate leadership, poor execution, and an inability to market the product effectively.
So why are we assuming that the first cuts and reforms should affect node operators?
Before asking the infrastructure providers to sacrifice their compensation, we should ask a more fundamental question: what has actually prevented Storj from growing as it should have over all these years?
Was the problem really the cost of the nodes, or was it the company’s inability to turn a technically strong network into a commercially successful business?
Just for clarity. By all employees you mean the old team that is already gone or the few remaining employees that are keeping it allive now?
Anyway in both cases the reality is that some of my coworkers are already working for free for 2.5 months now… I am just lucky that my country has other protections in place.
There is already another satellite active. I would suggest to team up with that satellite operator.
One problem I see with your plan is the current customer base. Spinning up a new satellite is already timing consuming. That other satellite operator can give a perspective on that. But I don’t think we can copy the database of the existing satellite over to it. That would require that someone buys the customer from the current storj company.
First of all, I’m genuinely sorry to hear that. They are still waiting for payments that I hope—and believe they will most likely, eventually receive, so hopefully we are talking about delays rather than unpaid work.
That said, if they are willing to work for Inveniam without being paid, I imagine they would be even more motivated to work on a new project built from the ground up, one in which they could play a much more central role and have a greater stake in its success.
That’s not quite the same thing. I’m talking about a full fork, a complete copy of the project, including all the necessary components, while of course respecting the applicable open-source licences and copyright rules.
I believe that depends on the outcome of this chapter 11 process.
That depends on the contract. I would not call it work for free. I would be unable to sign such a work contract. That is kind of the downside of the labor laws that protect me right now. I believe I can sign a contract with payment in equity but even that comes with a catch. Income taxes and insurances still need to be paid as if I would get the full amount of the equity in cash. That part can be minimized to some extend by using stock options but I believe not entirely. Labor laws are kind of strict. I don’t have to worry about not getting paid for a few month but also I don’t have the same freedome in signing work contracts.
Anyway the issue I still see is that this new satellite would have no paying customers. I am looking forward for a buisness plan that explains that.
Not sure if the code is worth forking.
For two reasons:
a financially sensible storj alternative (aka dirt cheap backup service) needs other tunings, maybe even a different architecture.
Is the code good? I don’t claim to know that. I am no developer. I just know that I as a total noob with an interest in ZFS, I voiced my concerns about sync writes (with my old account, deleted it out of protest of the censorship from the mods) in 2021. Sure they corrected it a few years later, but still. How good is a AWS alternative, where nobody of the development team seamed to understand the difference between async and sync?
i just put a second target for my offsite backups to storj.
It is a second offsite backup, so it isn’t that interesting if it is gone in a month.
Maybe helps a bit, maybe not.
to burn and I might consider to try that. 