I noticed that one of my nodes didn’t receive a payout in the last three months. On the dashboard’s Payment Information page, I see that the “Distributed payout” is 0. However, the “Undistributed payout” is also 0. It seems like the payouts have just “disappeared.”
I started to investigate why the node wasn’t being paid and was very surprised when I found out, using ReneSmeekes’s script ( GitHub - ReneSmeekes/storj_earnings: Earnings calculation script for Storj V3 storagenodes ), that the node was marked as being from a “Sanctioned country.” A few of my nodes are located in Russia, and most of them are still being paid, but not this one. I haven’t seen any announcement that nodes from Russia have been banned from receiving payouts. So, I would like clarification from the Storj Team:
Why was my node not paid? Does Storj really not pay, or do you plan to stop payouts to nodes located in Russia?
Why wasn’t there any announcement about this? Or did I miss it?
Why is my “banned” node still receiving data? If you don’t want to pay people who live in Russia, why don’t you suspend the node so that SNO will notice it? I understand that using nodes for free is great for business, but it is really unfair to keep SNO uninformed about this.
Is there any way to “unban” the node? Will it still be banned if I move it to another country?
Is there any way to receive payouts for the months that you haven’t sent?
We don’t decide what is or isnt an IP that is sanctioned. It comes out of an OFAC list that we fetch and filter on. OFAC changes that list when they decide an IP is in a sanctioned country or not.
Off the top of my head, I don’t know if Russia has blanket sanctions on it now. We will ask internally.
It would probably make sense to notify a SNO if their IP is currently under sanctions.
I don’t remember the exact IP I used for this node during the month when payouts were stopped, but I never used IPs located near the Russian-Ukrainian conflict zone or in sanctioned territories like Crimea. So, I really have no idea why this happened.
Is this list available to the public?
Banned node and few others (non-banned) use same payout address. Does it matter?
That’s an interesting idea: if the payment-script can expose the sanction flag then the node UI certainly could too.
That may not extend to something like an email though. Sometimes with sanctions if you’re asked about them you can be honest… but actively reaching out (like sending an email) could be considered a US company taking action to help a SDN avoid sanction.
Better to be passive. But really a question for council
Yeah, I pull that info from the database of the node for the earnings calculator. I’m kind of surprised it isn’t already shown on the dashboard. But it certainly could be.
I remember thinking at the time that the effort to put this payout note in the calculator would likely be useless as certainly the nope operator would already know. But I guess I’m happy now that I added the feature, seeing it helped someone find out why they weren’t being paid.
I believe the law is saying we are not allowed to send payments to these sanctioned countries. Everything else is fine. There are some customers that also wish to not upload any data to these countries and we comply with that as well. Otherwise there is no law yet that would force us to stop uploading any data to these countries. We just not allowed to pay them.
Usually change the government in that country to stop what ever it is doing wrong. I don’t want to go into politics here. These countries are usually controlled by government media with enough propaganda to brainwash everyone. So you either already know the reason for the sanction or you will not believe anything that breaks the propaganda image anyway. Just do you own research and you might find the truth.
Good question. Again I don’t want to go into politics here. Lets keep it casual. Initially I thought the reason for the sanction would be over in just a few months but it is now 2 years and it looks like it will continue for longer. Maybe we can revisit that question when the root cause is getting fixed and the end of the sanctions are in reach. It feels wrong to talk about that while people are dying to protect their freedoms.
May be it will be fair to communicate to people, that you are not allowed to pay there and then not to send data there also, because now you use SNOs resources but not allowed to pay for it? then stop also using this resources, it is fair enough.
Two quoted replies claiming not related to politics, but actually all the ideas are pointing to politics and not answering the questions.
The answers are very simple
No, Yes
can or cannot
No, Yes
Not answering a question is not the problem, but don’t use it as an answer. Sometimes, “I don’t know” could be much more meaningful / helpful than that
Sorry I don’t understand what you are trying to say to me. If you find my answer inappropiate thats fine. Just ignore it. We both can’t fix the world and just have to deal with the fallout…
I have never thought about the subject of fixing the world. Once a person has mentioned about it, he must think about that first.
However, this thread attracts me. It is even more interesting than those technical topics like performance, config blah blah blah… I also love to know the answers. Therefore, I read every post, cannot miss anyone.
Let me elaborate my comments on your 3 paragraphs towards his 5 questions:
Not informing those SNOs is true, otherwise you should have already denied. Um… half questions answered, acceptable
Paragraph 2
What is the relationship between moving nodes and changing the government? I really don’t get it. Absolutely off topic. Or you would like to say moving nodes is not enough? The whole conditions must include changing government. Assumptions should not be hidden if there were.
P3
Just simply an answer of NO is enough. When there is uncertainty, just put it as negative. Clean and clear.
Oh I see. I was assuming that migrating to a different country is more complicated but sure enough that would also work. Please keep in mind that I don’t live in any of these countries. From my perspective it is easier for me to change my government than migrating to a different country. That’s why it was first in my mind. But sure enough I can imagine things look different depending on the country. I can imagine a few locations where migrating out of the country is the easier option. I apologize for that.
This is true when democracy works and is one of the greatest benefits of democratic regimes.
Changing out of an authoritarian regime is fiendishly difficult and usually only happens at the cost of many lives. Migrating out can be much easier (but often not allowed by said regimes).
I just dig out something from Google. It may give you some hints.
I don’t know whether it could be treated as an official announcement and whether there was an updated version.
Also, keep in mind that there are few if-else conditions regard to sanctions in the blog. It is possible that some Russian nodes are blocked but some aren’t due to migration progress.
By the way, I am not a STORJ staff, i am just a newbie here
“In the event that sanctions are imposed, we have built systems that will allow us to track and hold payments in escrow so that we can make Russian Node Operators economically whole as soon as it is legal for us to do so.”
So, if OP says the problem node is in Russia, and the payment notes from Storj say it’s under sanction… then I guess the payments are being saved internally… and once the IP comes off the OFAC list the coins will be sent out?
That’s actually a fair and well-thought-out system!
