Let's talk about the elephant in the room: The Storj economic model (node operator payout model)

[BrightSilence]

@humbfig

Well, I don’t think it makes sense to start a node on a 20TB disk and run it until it dies. By the time the disk fills up and you’re recovering your big 20TB investment, the disk is already a walking dead.

You’ll earn back your investment in roughly 20 months. I don’t know what HDD’s you buy, but that HDD would still be in warranty if it fails at that time… Most HDD’s easily last 5 years. And usually much more. In 5 years that $400 HDD will earn you $3000. Subtract $400 for initial cost and $300 for energy cost (using $5 per month for that), that’s $2300 of profit. And every additional year would earn you $800 - $60 in energy costs.

So what part doesn’t make sense?

Furthermore after 34 months that HDD is full and you have made $1200 -$400 - $170 (energy) = $630 profit. Plenty to buy a new HDD and keep making even more profit on 2 nodes now.

Of course all of this feels a lot more manageable if you can start with HDD’s you already own and only spend money earned with Storj (which is what I did). Especially if you can long term use that HDD space for personal use as well (which at this point is only partially true for me).

@stuberman

That is the reality of running a real business. You don’t buy cheap garbage, you buy something that will have the highest ROI (long running HDD with low energy consumption), I also factored in everything it takes, a rack in a real data center, labor, network.

I’m gonna outcompete you… I have no costs other than HDD purchase and energy use. And the above calculation assumes Exos HDD’s with a 5 year warranty. Not cheap garbage. I won’t have PB scale, but 100 node operators like me would. And we’d make plenty of money while you lose money with your estimate.