Let's address the Held Amount problem

If you are annoyed by the held amount or not, would you be ok with these two options:
1.make a deposit upfront, when you start a node, and get rid of held amount?
2.no deposit and keep the held amount way on.

In case of choosing 1, what is the deposit are you willing to make and in what currecie? Fiat or storj tokens?

As I see it, making a deposit upfront helps Storj geting more liquidity and me, as a SNO, giving more predictibility.
If I lock, let’s say 50$, I know I can only loose 50$ if my node fails and can’t make GE. And I will get 25€ back after 15 months, if the deposit follows the rules of held amount.
In present, with the great ingress and engress that we’re having now, I have 3 nodes of 2-3 months old and the held amount is piling up very quickly. I may end up with 100$ locked/node after 10 months.
Where is the predictibility in that? I’m not worried about failing hardware, because I only use new. But this is me. If you go with SH hardware, maybe you are better with the old way.

According to the realistic earnings estimator, with the current rates and with no held amount, a new (very large) node would earn $25 in about 5 months and $50 in 7 months. That’s a long time to have my own money locked and essentially not just working for free, but actually paying to be allowed to work (I’m OK with that, but the work has to be fun, say, firing a steam engine).

With the current system, I only risk my time and effort. If my node fails after two weeks, I don’t really lose anything. OK, I’m fairly confident that I could set up a node and manage to keep it running, but what about a new node operator? If this was in place when Storj v3 first came out, I probably would not have set up a node, just like I do not have SIA or similar nodes that require payment up front to be allowed to maybe make money someday.

OK, with the current rates it would take about 7 months to get back my own money and be at zero. What about the proposed rates? Taking the upper limits ($1/$5), the time to get back my $50 is 11 months and taking the lower limits ($0.75/$1.5) it’s 14 months and that’s assuming there are zero costs associated with running te node.

It would also be weird that Storj says “don’t buy new hardware, use what you have” and then ask for the amount of money that would be enough to buy a new 1TB HDD or a used 4TB HDD

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Predictability would be nice, but there are other ways to solve that that don’t require risking your own investment upfront. This is the reason I never started with Sia and I probably wouldn’t be here if Stork had this requirement when I started. I’d probably be willing to do it now, because I already know how to run a stable node and I already have income from existing nodes. But for a new node operator who maybe messes up their first node because they lack the experience, having an upfront deposit is a big risk.

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Yes, there should always be the second option available, especialy for new SNOs.
Maybe this discussion would be more appropriate next year, after the new payout rates are in effect, for the right numbers. At current rates, if I have the option right now and I want to start a new node, I will gladely deposit maximum 50$ upfront. But next year will be another thing.
My held amounts on the 9 nodes (2 on the same machine):
N1 - 26 months, 5.98$.
N2/1 - 22 months, 7.27$.
N2/2 - 9 months, 22.34$.
N3 - 14 months, 14.92$.
N4 - 10 months, 28.64$.
N5 - 9 months, 35.63$.
N6 - 5 months, 23.14$.
N7 - 4 months, 20.16$.
N8 - 3 months, 12.04$.

There is another issue. What if the node gets disqualified because of a software bug? If it’s a new node under current conditions, the operator does not really lose anything, just have to set up another node and wait a bit longer. On the other hand, if I had to deposit $50 and then my node got disqualified because of what looked like a software bug, I would probably think that Storj was stealing from me.

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If it’s a software bug, it will affect many nodes, not just yours, and most probably they will lift the desqualification tag on the nodes affected. I’ve seen that; Storj team is very open to help SNOs not to loose nodes. If they rise suspicion that they are robbing people, there will be a very big problem and the network will colapse very quickly.
So the problem with the deposit untill now is just the possibility of node fail in the first year.

If to talking about deposit to rid of veeting process, then i think i cold be amount pet TB that reeded to rebuld this data, and if you make deposit to 1 TB then you get full traffik till 1tb filed. then you can add deposit more for additional TB. so boath get what they want SNO full traffic from day 1 and storj warrety if node fail.

Would quite happily pay about $50 up front to bypass the whole vetting process.
I suppose this might add a certain layer of uncertainty to Storj, though, so they may well not be willing to take that risk.
The important thing, IMHO, is to make this “payment up front” optional rather than a requirement.
Potential new SNOs unfamiliar with Storj may be understandably suspicious of joining a “pay upfront and you’ll get money later” scheme (this is a massive red flag for me).

That would be good, but then you have to adjust the held amount to build up to that amount too, otherwise that would be a much cheaper option.

And I just thought of something… Imagine the support tickets and forum threads if people are out their own money, even if it’s their own mistake… They are not gonna be pretty.

Remember that with the planned reduction of payouts, held amounts would also decrease for new nodes.

I didn’t think about that… “Hi Storj team, I just made my first node and my USB is busted. I will move to a new setup soon and I want to start fresh because my node will be disqualified anyway. Could you please send my money back? Thanks!”
This is gonna be the regular start of the day for Storj :smile:

@Toyoo
yep, that’s why I said this discution is better for next year, after that…

Maybe new SNOs would only have 1 option, and the veterans with 2+ nodes older than 1 year could have both.

A problem is that you can lose the deposit very quickly (probably in a few hours), while with the held amount you would not lose anything. Also, if there is little traffic on the network, the held amount will be small, but the deposit would be the same.

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True, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take, because I’m confident in what I’m doing and the setups I choose, and I like to have more options than one. If I choose wrong, it’s my own fault. I won’t blame Storj for giving me that option.
It’s always good to have more options, like in marriage :rofl:, or like with the payout address… you have Storj main network, you have zkSync, you have Polygon.

If there is a software bug, the team likely will revert this DQ.

Would not be ok with option 1 and 2.
But with option number 3.
The best way to secure the network is to pay SNOs well.
3. No deposit, no held amount. SNOs paid a minimum $3/TB stored, will keep network strong.
Like a magnet. There’s no way around.
On the other hand, If don’t want to pay SNOs well? then yes, You have to put wasteful solutions in place like held amount or deposit, to prevent normal fair reactions, like just quitting at some point, when paid badly.
But if paid good, there’s no reason in spontaneously quitting.
And You can safe time and effort on coming up with quitting prevent features.
You have redundancy, repair process, and You can give additional rewards for Graceful exit if You need, that’s enough.
And well paid SNOs will fight with tooth and nails to keep nodes online to support, who support them, and to not get disqualified, so not to loose a node.

The held amount/deposit is invented to solve two problems: repair costs and prevent SNO to quit abruptly.

quitting abruptly is solved by paying $3/TB for storage,
and paying $3/TB for storage, is possible only with lowering or nullifying payments for egress and repair traffic to SNOs, at the same time. It’s like the mechanism of a clock, everything has to interlock.

Nulifying payments for engress will abruptly shut down my nodes :smile:

Sure, I know that, but imagine someone new setting up a node, then having it disqualified within days.
Another issue is that, at least right now, GE is only possible after a year or more of running a node. So, let’s say someone sets up a new node, then figures out that it is not possible to run it (too much load on his equipment, his parents yell at him for keeping the PC on all the time, whatever), but now has to either somehow keep running the node for a long time or lose his own money.
Is it really a big problem for the network if I set up a new node and then delete it after a couple of days with probably a few MB of data?

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