4€/month?
What drive is that?
How much do you pay for kWh?
I suspected that is how it should work. The problem is it also means the graceful exit makes no sense. Let me give you an example with real data. I have 6.6TB on my oldest node (more than 15 months) with 6.46$ as held amount. If I would exit gracefully, it would take 1 month at 25Mb/s to upload my node to other nodes, and I would get 6.46$ for it. Now, if I can wait 1 month before switching off my node, then I would rather run it as usual for that month and ungracefully switch it off by the end of one month. By doing that I would get 20 plus $'s, while not having my network running 25 Mb/s upload for a whole month.
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I agree, at the moment held amount is basically broken. It’s been suggested several times to just keep building held amount until it amounts to $10 per TB. In your case that would now be $66 and probably be well worth it to do a graceful exit. But as you mentioned, currently it’s cheaper to just run the node until you really need the space for something else and then just kill it.
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It’s a 3.5" external drive which uses around 10w. I pay around 0.5€ per kWh.
I see… well, the 10W figure is normal, but 0.5€/kWh is overkill…
Maybe a solar panel? You get more than 10 hours of effective daylight…
Just for the disk would not be worth it. But consider everything you have running 24/7 (computers, routers, switches, some ill thought infrared receivers…).
~350W panel is ~250€
microinverter is ~140€
differential circuit breaker is ~30€
instalation materials varie a lot…
Even if the sun is not shining it still should output ~50-100W, as long as there is daylight.
Depending on the country you live in, you might get away with just connecting the microinverter to your power network and forget about it.
Depending on the country you live in, you might have the right to install it on the roof even if you live in an apartment.
This will cut your 24/7 low power appliances by ~50%.
yep, 66$ would be worth a graceful exit…
But would it be worth for a starting node operator to invest his time and, in some cases, money, to wait for so long (1 year?) until he sees some tokens?
Also, like the current held amount system, that would be a tax on serious node operators that have no intention of leaving the network, just a bigger tax…
I can not agree with a system that effectively cuts the earnings it promises to the node operators, whether 6.46$ or 66$. It kind of looks like a similar ongoing business that is based on the model of “not paying the node operators”…
That said, since this thread (which I knew was coming, but hoped it would come later…) will be used by the storj staff to feel out what they can count on from their “workers” (SNO’s), I will leave my 2 cents on the subject:
I obviously want storj to succeed and prosper, but it’s clear the current model (prices/payments) is not sustainable. I think it’s clever to subsidise the network under the prospect of substantial growth (it’s just tokens anyway, though the circulating supply should not grow faster than the network itself). It’s also obvious the “workers for free” model is not sustainable either. It doesn’t matter if only 10% of us say they will leave or if 50% say they will leave in case of severe cuts. In the medium/long term we will all do something else with our disk space if it is not profitable, then the project will just die.
Most of the numbers discussed so far for SNO payments can’t really cut it (one SNO mentioned paying 4$/month on electricity to run 1 external disk, meaning, if it is a 2TB old disk he had lying around waiting to be discarded, he’s basically being paid to connect the disk to the power grid). That is not sustainable!!!
The way I see it, storj can not compete on lower prices alone. It has to bring added value to the storage market. It has to offer something different and find its niche (CDN is a great argument, although first byte speed is not so good). Also, as someone (sorry, can’t remember the name) has pointed out, it doesn’t matter how technically good you are, without good marketing you’re dead.
Storj should grow until it finds its size, even at the cost of subsidies. It should aim to become a player in the storage market. It has a great defence against being crushed by other big players, which is the use of tokens. The consequent release of frozen tokens is bad only when it stops growing. Meanwhile it should technically focus on what it can bring different and/or better to the market. When it reaches its niche and stops growing, then we should address this big heavy elephant. By then, hopefully, the market will be different and we’ll have a better perspective.
On a more personal basis I would say this: I will not subsidise the network running unprofitable nodes (duh!). Since I’m not running anything specifically for storj, I will not switch off my nodes just because it’s no longer profitable. I will switch them off when I need the space for something else (duh again!).
While building to this amount only 50% should be held back. So the operator still gets paid, just less.
Well there is no sign from Store Labs of any specific changes coming. I may have jumped the gun a little, but I thought it would be good to get the conversation started.
Energy prices in Europe are crazy right now. It won’t stay that way forever though. But this is probably not the right time to lower payouts. I live in the Netherlands and unfortunately prices are similar for me. But starting next year their will be a cap to how much energy suppliers can charge. And we’re already getting compensation for the last months of the year. We’re in an energy transition that is forced to speed up significantly because of geopolitical strains. We’ll get out the other end of that some day.
Absolutely, but they need to have more market recognition first. CDN cases work great for larger files already, where the time to first byte is less critical. Cases like software distribution or video or large data sets.
I think you hit the right points. The timing is bad. But keep in mind that it was me who started this discussion, not Storj Labs. And they’ve made it clear they have no intention to “grind node operators to a pulp”. Gotta love that quote, haha.
Sure. But the point still remains. If you have made a few thousand already, the 66$ held (forever!!!) by storj doesn’t make much of a difference. But try to explain a new SNO that the promised 1.5$/20$ will only be effective in 1 or 2 years…
And you did good. I’m not criticizing the initiative. It was coming and you just had more guts to start it. I do have a few problems on discussing actual numbers (for paying SNO’s) at this stage. Nobody is getting rich, not even Vadim (whose setup I don’t understand, BTW!). But throwing in the air numbers like 0.73$/5$ is laughable. Maybe some older big SNO’s can cope with those numbers. No small or new SNO (math conscient) will run a node.
I’m not sure we will ever have low cost energy again. We will need the high cost to make the transition (forget about Russia invading Ukraine). And that may not be a bad thing… in the great scheme of things…
Yes, I think that is THE point. That is why I’m so bullish on growing, even if subsidized growing. Storj is in a great position to grow because it doesn’t need investors to grow. Growing does not bring costs (they don’t have to buy more facilities, more disks or pay for more energy or infrastructure), and even if it did, they have already printed their own money, which also makes them more resilient when facing “competitor attacks”. Not to aim at growing under these circumstances means either you are short-sighted or the world just doesn’t need more storage.
First, let’s buy a sit at the table, then we’ll play our cards.
I was never worried for a single second they would grind me to a pulp by cutting my “lamb buying” profits. They need SNO’s as much as they need clients. Exactly as much…
You know what would be stupid? To let the project die while sitting on ~200M tokens…
The “grinding node operators to a pulp” was a joke @john made in response to me addressing the discussion in this topic during the last Twitter space. It’s worth listening to his response, because I think he echoes exactly the sentiment you’re expressing. My question starts at around the 20 minute mark.
https://twitter.com/storj/status/1588607064955588608
It’s about a 10 minute response that while not containing specifics, does very clearly state Storj’s attitude towards the current situation and goals.
Tomorrow there is another Twitter spaces planned if you want to ask your own followup questions. Unfortunately I can’t make it this time, but it would be awesome if other node operators could chime in.
I’ll be sure to listen back afterwards.
That was the whole point in mentioning numbers. To make that response very clear. And I think in balance this topic shows that $1/$5 is not acceptable for too many nodes.
I can make some calculations to show what it would actually look like. But you would only have to build up to that $66 while your node grows. Most months you wouldn’t have the full 50% held back because your node doesn’t yet have to build more collateral. Let me get back to that in a bit. But I see your point. I would like to say that some other networks have you stake tokens upfront, which is much more of a hurdle. I like that storj doesn’t require that to begin with and just uses held back payouts. It would also be possible to lower this requirement for long term reliable nodes. Say pay back half after a year of running your node and only require $5 per TB after that. These knobs can be tweaked so it makes sense for everyone.
It would look something like this for a node that keeps growing.
Yeah, I think some fine tuning is needed. But this gives some idea of what I was thinking of.
For a 5TB node it would look like this.
Would a couple month “grace period” delay to the held amount be helpful to new nodes? Having a larger cut of the pie taken when your earnings are so low seems like a bigger hit than waiting several months for the earnings to grow a bit before taking any for collateral. I realize this could increase the amount of new nodes leaving due to lack of punishment, but could it boost the perceived payment for new nodes, incentivizing new SNOs to stick around more? It just seems like a dial to move to find the best option.
P.S. I guess the basis of my thought is, where does storj want to prevent churn? On new nodes, or older nodes? So if churn at 1-3 months doesnt matter, does “increasing” payout at that time increase the number of nodes that actually do stick around, where you can take more collateral, while its less to the SNO.
That’s far too high for a 3.5" HDD. From what I read 6W would be more realistic.
My server draws ~125W on average and has 9 HDD’s and 1 SSD. If the 10W would be true then motherboard, CPU, RAM and all the fans would use next to nothing.
It ranges from 5-9W, but an external USB disk adds additional overhead due to the power adapter loss of efficiency. 10W sounds about right to me.
Ah, I didn’t read the “external” part.
They would use nest to 30W, which seems reasonable…
actually you will receive $6.46 held amount plus what it is earned while running, it will be likely less than $20, but in total you will receive more than $20.
ok. I didn’t know the node would still run as usual.
Anyway, the math doesn’t seem good. If the node decreases linearly to zero size during the month, I should expect to receive 10 (plus 6.46), not 20. Also, for sure I will not receive anything for repair upload during that month (would amount to 66 if that was the case), so let’s say 8-9 (plus 6.46) would be more realistic.
Still less than 20…
You would for repair egress (which is download in storj terminology). There is no reason for that to change. You still have the data on a healthy node. So repair will still use your node as source as long as it has the data. It’s still less than what you would make if you kept running is normally, which is indeed an issue.
yep, you should be right. My node would still do the “usual” egress repair while doing the massive egress to other nodes (which I would also call “egress repair”, thus the confusion. I’m probably wrong on my name calling).
So, 10 + 6.46, still less than 20, still 25 Mb/s upload for a whole month.
Ahh, I see. Well, just for some context. This is quite different traffic. Egress repair is the satellite (repair worker) downloading good pieces from your node in order to recreate lost pieces on other nodes. This download transfers data to the repair worker. Graceful exit egress is just your node transferring existing pieces directly to another node. So no “repair” actually takes place, it’s more just a data migration.