Nothing says decentralized like barring those with less.
4 Likes
Maybe a minimum balance of $5/$10, and withdraw funds from balance. Customer can top up when they want/need.
2 Likes
How about not doing this?
Instead require $5 in account and bill $5 if it drops below
9 Likes
me too…apparently, me too.
I thought I would be among the few complaining about this, but I couldn’t agree more with what others have said before.
This could have been done in many different and better ways; instead, it is perceived as a “boot to the back” for small users.
As many said before - too many to quote each of them individually! - a straightforward solution would have been to use prepaid/top-up credit instead, allowing small users to keep using a “pay on the go” strategy.
6 Likes
My company used Storj for backing up primary accounting documents and for website hosting, and it cost us approximately $0.11–$0.20 per month. Now we have to pay 20 times more. Introducing a minimum monthly fee of $5 is an idiotic decision.
5 Likes
Being able to pay less than $1.5 for my backups was THE reason I picked Storj over anything else. Now, from one of the cheapest options it turned into the most expensive one for sub 1TB usage. Their value proposition and market differentiator are now gone. It just makes no logical sense for anyone paying less than $5 to keep their account. I for sure won’t.
11 Likes
I am in since starting Storj v2. It’s sad.
By by I shutdown my nodes and also delete all my data on Storj.
I wish you a lot of success
5 Likes
I use Storj for backups of a few services in my homelab. It’s been great and I’ve recommended it to others.
I don’t come close to 5$ a month and this change will unfortunately force me to find something else.
7 Likes
If the intent is to keep supporting small accounts then something like topping up user’s account with, lets say, $50 minimum should help. Users won’t be forced to pay $5/month when their usage is well below that. Whatever the cost is incurred can be deducted from the top-up. A good example is BrightSIlence’s post.
This should get rid of the issue with payment processing charges unless Storj doesn’t want to deal with smaller accounts at all.
2 Likes
Thank you for the great product. We had a good time - but now you are getting too greedy.
Account deleted.
8 Likes
Like many others, I am very disappointed. Not only about the very short notice, but also about the solution. STORJ has always been a community driven project and I think this move will permanently damage the community. Not only will hardly any private person use Storj as a storage solution anymore, but the open source contributions will also go towards 0.
I will also delete my account.
8 Likes
But that’s sort of the point. Storj wants to stick to B2B. Nothign wrong with that. I’m not upset about it one bit.
What I am upset about, without repeateing the whole thread, is being bullshited in my face with “we need $5 to cover the cost of payment processing and basic operations” and the choice of the worst possible solution to acompish this all while antagonizing the most loyal audience.
Anyway, not my company, not my problem.
7 Likes
“If your monthly usage (storage, bandwidth, and segments) exceeds $5, nothing changes.”. Does this mean that if a node earns >$5, there is no fee?
1 Like
It has nothign to do wiht the node. Its about storage customers
2 Likes
I am very glad I have never started to use Storj as a customer. My usage would have been certainly below the $5 threshold, so they would start to overcharge me now. I would certainly look for a different solution then.
3 Likes
On storj as customer that pays ~3$/month with Storj tokens upfront and used customer service probably once in 2 years… This is a spit in the face. I’m now divided between loading more useless data or get rid of the service.
Wouldn’t it be better to avoid this for those who pay with tokens? Couldn’t you make those who pay with credit cards pay a fixed amount and than deduce it? Couldn’t you deny customer support to those under 5$?
I’m seriously contemplating going away and I swear that’s the last thing I wanted… I was so proud of doing the extra Hussle but not giving in to AWS or Google… Bah
6 Likes
As I understand Storj push people to more token payments, as
If the reason behind this change is accurate, it’s understandable that Storj wants to avoid paying significant payment processing fees on small earnings. However, the introduction of this fee and the short timeframe for implementation raise concerns. It’s puzzling that Storj management chose to impose a minimum fee on all accounts, including those that are already funded.
It’s hard to believe that Storj management didn’t consider alternative solutions. For example, some providers require a minimum payment amount for each transaction via Paypal, while also charging a separate payment processing fee, but offer a zero-fee payment option. If Storj wants to avoid payment processing fees, why not charge customers only for the actual fees incurred? For already funded accounts, there should be no requirement to pay for non-existent payment processing fees.
Another option could be to carry over open balances to the next month until a certain threshold is reached, triggering payment initiation. It’s likely that Storj management was aware of these alternatives but still chose to introduce the minimum fee. The way this change was introduced erodes trust in the company’s management. How can customers trust Storj with their valuable data if they’re treated this way?
If Storj had consulted the community before making this decision, they might have received thoughtful feedback on how to implement this change. Now, the damage is done, and trust has been lost. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Town Hall meeting conveyed a positive outlook, with the company aiming to be cash-flow positive, making this sudden move unexpected.
It either sounds like
where VC fundraising was mentioned in the recent Town Hall.
Or a desperate need for cash.
But their decision might impact the earnings of Storage Node Operators (SNOs).
5 Likes
To be perfectly clear, because I see the same comment being repeated a lot of times: The current way if your usage was so low that they can’t absorb the processing fees was that it keeps pilling into an owed balance, until it reaches a threshold that makes absorbing the fee possible. In clear language: if your usage was $0.10/month, it would pile for a whole year and get to $1.20, which covers the $0.20 minimum payment processing fee, then your card gets charged and everyone is happy. Disclaimer: numbers may not be accurate.
The new way of doing things is that somehow in the past 48 hours the payment fees got so high that they need to charge more. To be perfectly clear: the payment fees have not changed at all, this change isn’t about covering the payment fees.
If the accounting team grew, that should have been baked into the product’s price. If we believe the (alleged) increase in paid stored data, then the “extra” money coming from that increase should have covered that. Nobody respond with “they didn’t see it covering their expenses”, they’ve literally had years to adjust the product’s price.
Maybe it’s for covering support, but if a product works, has clear documentation and instructions on how to use it, then there isn’t any support.
So if it’s not for covering payment fees, and definitely not for covering salaries, then what is the change about? Did we run out of data to delete and somehow need to create a new soon-to-be-deleted data category?
5 Likes
Why can Storj not make payments on the Blockchain? Then there are very low fees.
For sure not on ERC-20 itself. But there are L2 solutions ready