But only if the open amount is lower than the balance/earnings.
I am talking about the opposite case we well, when the earnings are higher than the amount to pay.
The ways Storj has repeatedly announced and carried out changes are simply terrible. This has been addressed and acknowledged:
And this is following a pattern which erodes trust:
I like it and gave it a vote. But I think there is a vastly more profitable version of this Storj could offer. You can keep most of it as @Toyoo suggested, but make it possible to tie the storagenode to a customer account, instead of a payout address. Then automatically set the storage limit of the customer account to 50% of the amount of data stored on the node.
Why? Any restriction against the existing flow is an additional expensive spend of the developerās time. Not needed. We can reuse the existing flow.
Iām also not sure that it would be easy to implement suggested restrictions (costs will be higher, than use the current system).
Then the invoice will be covered and the remaining amount will be used in the next invoice. So, why?
ok, four months of notification ahead is a couple of hours for some, got it.
Well, I think nobody can help with this.
here is a nuance. Consumer apps usually force you to pay for the fully allotted storage, even if you use 10% of it. This is the way, how to have a profit, of course. In the case of Storj you are paying only for what you are using (if the usage is more or equal than a minimum billing amount or if you pay with STORJ).
Do you suggest also to have a pre-paid for the full allotted storage and egress despite the actual usage? We have it too, itās called RCS (Reserved Capacity Storage) and can be negotiated with Sales.
Iām suggesting in this scenario customers prepay by storing 2x the capacity they get to use themselves. So in a way, yes. The big difference is that no money/tokens ever has to change hands. Customers will determine how much data they want to store eventually and likely will keep a big margin. If I need to store 200GB now, Iād let my node grow to at least 1TB (=500GB of available space for me in this suggested scenario) to have some headroom for future needs. It would basically let Storj benefit from that same convention commonly used in consumer services.
The barrier of entry would be super low as potential customers for this tier donāt need to set up any payments. Just start the node, wait for data to come in and you can start uploading when youāve stored 2x the amount you want to backup.
Because this is how the system currently works.
Of course it depends on Storj if they want to implement it or not.
Because if you are earning $10 a month and the invoice is only $1 per month you send tokens into the account that you might want in your wallet.
Overcomplicating things to solve an inexisting problem.
First, we donāt have a lack of operators or available space; au contraireā¦
Second, stored data can be halved in a day; just look at last week; an x PB customer left the building; you canāt base anything on a āstored dataā relation.
Third, any bling bling offers attract unwanted members (SNO), that lack the expirience of running nodes, and leave at the first signs of problems, putting stress on repair workers and increase the costs for Storj Inc (I donāt even know how to call it this days). Besides that, the data coming in already thin as it is now, would be spread even thinner among the nodes, making even the old guys leave.
Forth, nodes are still opening in an āunsustainableā number, flattening the growth of everyone, without any new incentive.
So, I realy donāt see a need for this right now.
If is just an ideea for a future when the data comming in is so huge that current opperators canāt handle, than OK, Iām very open to new ideeas and can discuss anything.
Yeah, I mostly agree with that. But itās also an avenue to bring in paying users if they can pay for additional storage. Itās kind of a replacement for the now defunct free tier. People can try it for āfreeā with this forever or as long as they like and a subset of them will end up paying for it. The big difference that the original free tier cost resources and this one provides resources.
Definitely still much better to attract big customers directly, of course.
I doubt that would benefit me, as a long time SNO. Storj business maybe. But I care about my revenue to increase, not to decrease, even though Storj will gain more.
Why is that? Because like the proposal sais, the new SNO that want the offer should come with at least double the space they presume they need.
So the first thing we will see would be an accute increase of available space and nodes, and the existing nodes that are flat for the past 2 years starting loosing data. I donāt want that. I am
against that.
But maybe Iām overreacting and make wrong assumptions. Maybe very few will join just because of this, and we will all benefit; some from the new data, others for the cheaper cloud. Realy hard to predictā¦
+1! - Storj definately has never had a problem with spare capacity. I canāt imagine any amount of incoming customer data that the current 32000+ nodes couldnāt absorb. And those existing SNOs could easily expand faster than customers could fill HDDs.
Well, if they were doing research in the first place, they wouldnāt become early adopters altogether. Meaning, you were directly counting on people not doing research to grow your business in the early phase 
Are you sure you want to use this argument? 
Yeah, I probably overengineered that bit to make the incentive structure granular. I like your idea!
I donāt follow. Why is it so?
Operators:
operators join after researching the project and understanding the concept and payouts and what not, and since this makes sense at any payout ā join. And stay. Storj wants such low churn operators.
Operators that did not do reseaexh and joined due to huge unrealistic initial payouts - leave. Storj maybe wanted them early, but not now. They are high churn. .
Customers.
Same thing. Those who research and decided that this onnoxios wordwide throughput inherent to the architecture is what they need ā stay regardless of cost fluctuations. Storj wants such customers.
Those who did not ā ah, itās another cloud storage ā upload data, stress the network, and donāt pay for storage, becuse they jump ship to another lower bidder that is 1 bucks a month cheaper. Storj does not want such customers.
So I disagree. At every point Storj wanted both vendors and customers that had done research.
You assume the hindsight of knowing what Storj is capable of. That wasnāt the case, even Storj did not have this information.
What You proposed is āOne for all, all for oneā.
Affordable decentralized backup network.
Its just a beautiful idea.
if Storj would ever need an quick expand of available free space, and new SNOs in Africa, or Asia, (MEASA) beside monetary rewards as tokens, which is limited in dollar value, the wise incentive is to pay in other type of value, unique to storj, that cannot be measured in dollars, but in storj itself, an unique properties and unique benefits for joining storj. Every body can offer money (tokens) but only Storj can offer Storj.
i would like to have all my SSD disks images to be kept in storj cloud, but its an expensive whim for a non-profit backups. its like 2TB, it would cost every month some $ for storage.
And an small fortune for a download.
probably never would need to download more than 128GB, and the amount of $ bucks is small, but the inconvenience of another process to keep in mind, to keep the balance for the accountā¦ also i cant afford to top up for like 10 years up in front.
i want more and more peace of mind, not less.
i have already a Storj nodes, would like to have free TB % for my backups included without doing anything. That would be a great value and could be a real protection from NON-graceful exit.
(access to backups restrained if nodes offline for more than 20 days or so)
(* someone has to pay for it obviously, so any SNO wanting a free small % of his backup to be decentralized, would also need to agree to offer same % of his storage free for other SNOs. It would be a matter of Storj inc. decision if proportion of the % would have to be the same, depends of need of expansion, or equivalent of payment rise etc.)
Or like āallocate 50TB get 1TB free storage and 1TB free download a year)ā
You can specify the account L2 deposit address as a wallet address for your node, so your earnings will pay for the storage automatically. Since it will be in STORJ tokens, there would be no minimum monthly billing.
Can you then transfer remaining coins to another wallet? (Like Metamask, Kraken, etc - obviously they would be required transfer fees)
At least the way it used to work was the moment the tokens hit the address at Storjā¦ they turned into USD-equivalent in account credit: so they stopped being crypto and became prepaid cash. And the only way to ever take money out of your Storj account was during cancellation.
Sounds like the way to instantly convert the payout into USD. Awesome idea! Now how to get the money from Storj account to personal bank account?
It is certainly a way to increment a number on a web page: Iāll give you that! 
It would go like this:
Note:
Prepayments made via STORJ token transactions are nonrefundable unless an account is being closed.
So you would direct your Storj earnings to your Storj account, receive 10% bonus and then close the account and cash outā¦ 
ā¦ and open new account for next month.
Please note that refunds in this case will be paid out in STORJ token, at the current USD/STORJ exchange rate at time of refund. Of course you will not get a refund for any bonus we added when you originally made a STORJ deposit, only whatever fraction of your deposited balance remained when you deleted the account.