Production readyness?

[Mad_Max]

@VinC

It does not mention a “free trial” anywhere in it. It mentions “your credit card will not be charged until production” somewhere before adding a credit card, but this phrasing is ambiguous and nowhere as powerful as “Thank you for joining tardigrade’s beta. This decentralized storage service is completely free of charge until production release, please use us well”. It is also best to not ask for credit card at all during free trial, just let them try it, no strings attached. Plastering every page with “I want your CC right now” is not a good way to get people’s trust and business.

This is especially true because there were promised option to pay for storage use by Storj tokens. So Credit Card use should be only optional even after the production release and after end of all free trials/credits/promos user get.

[swf]

Trial satellite can be very effective,
as well as if node operators can obtain some kind of democracy in a matter of providing “free bw/storage/data persistence over time” on their own choice

If storj will consider implementing settings like
DONATIONSTORAGE=<percentage|exact amount in Tb> (this node)
DONATIONSTORAGERETENTION=<days> (assumed as “per client/lead”)
DONATIONSTORAGEBW=<monthly limit in Tb> (this node)
for node operators it can be a great benefit for the whole ecosystem

it will also help to get consensual dynamic decisions upon trial terms/options based on current network possibilities

[Pentium100]

If there is a need, I can spin up another node to use with the “testing” satellite.

[Krey]

I see that some people liked the idea of the promo-satellite.
I have another similar suggestion - BACKUP SATELLITE.
No payments or credit cards. Just Storage.
Give 3T, then 1T you can use for you own backups for as long as you keep other people’s backups.

Such offers have grand advertising effect. It would be worthwhile to think about it earlier, but in any case, it’s worth postponing the production to correct errors and presenting the Tardigrade a lot cool!
And not present bad product in Jan\Feb. I’m afraid my heart can’t stand it.

[Krey]

The cost of storage space not really matters when product works. For any price there is a client. But if the product does not work you will not find users even for free.

When I started this topic, posting a message that was being prepared by all the Telegram “STORj
Russian Chat” community I did not know how storj network works on the client side. Now thanks to @jocelyn I know. My fears intensified. I’m glad I could try, and I’m glad I wrote this post, it would seem on time.

[jocelyn]

Hi Krey thanks for writing this post and for opening the dialog. Im talking to pl here in engineering and product about it, and have encouraged them to also join this thread and respond

[Derkades]

I know this thread is not really for discussion but could you explain what would make this “backup statelite” system better than running a storagenode and using the earnings from that to buy storage at Tardigrade?

In my opinion the second option is more flexible and fair. You might even make money, because you’d be storing data and getting money from egress, while when making backups you don’t need to pay for any egress (unless you need to restore).

[Krey]

@Derkades

could you explain what would make this “backup statelite” system better than running a storagenode and using the earnings from that to buy storage at Tardigrade?

1. It is more simple. No need to deal with cryptocurrency, exchanges, wallets (until you need backup). Due to this, you can attract people who do not want to mess with crypto at all.
2. It may be cheaper. 3x for redundancy over 10/1.5
3. It may be more convenient for SNO, they can setup backup node on more specific storage and channels for cold data.

The idea itself (barter backups) is not new. It is regularly expressed at various forums of handmade NAS builders. But with Storj make it simple.

I am sure that such satellites will appear on their own without the effort of Labs. Someday. But at this stage, such a satellite would draw huge attention to the platform itself. And it would greatly increase the size of the network, which is important at this stage.

[LarsOS]

@Krey

The idea itself (barter backups) is not new.

It was searching for that that brought me to Storj. I realized that it was not what I was looking for, but it was intriguing nonetheless, so I set up a node.

[jammerdan]

@swf

as well as if node operators can obtain some kind of democracy in a matter of providing “free bw/storage/data persistence over time” on their own choice

Funny, I have thought of something like that as well. I would not mind giving away some space for free. However implementation and aim must be discussed as it could lead to less usage of the paid service.
However there are services which might be great to support for free like Wikipedia, webarchive, Wikileaks or Tor. For other services maybe bandwidth limit, less redundancy or shorter retention could be done.

[Mad_Max]

Yeah, good idea. I would glad to allocate some part of the storage and bandwidth for the Internet archive/Webarchive and Wikimedia Commons(Storj not very usefull for Wiki itself but can be useful for Wikimedia Commons which is media storage of all Wikipedia projects - storing supplement video/audio/photo/pics for Wiki articles).

As a separate optional satellite of course.

[jammerdan]

When I thought about it, I thought 2 types of free space could be considered:

1. Type for projects like mentioned: Wikipedia/Wikimedia, etc. Storage for them could be unrestricted and limited only by the amount of space the SNO dedicate for them.
2. Second type should be something anybody could experience the Tardigrade service. If possible a web based file host like Dropbox or Onedrive or somthing. To not drive away to much business from the paid Tardigrade service, this could be limited by bandwidth, retention restricions or limited number of downloads. This is more considered marketing for the paid service.

I would not mind to give away some space and bandwidth for both types.

[jammerdan]

@Mad_Max

This is especially true because there were promised option to pay for storage use by Storj tokens. So Credit Card use should be only optional even after the production release

Not just for promise. Also security wise it is always better only to collect data that is really required. Just a single database hack and an attacker has all the details from every user.

[stefanbenten]

We do not store these informations ourself! We have an integration with a payment service, that handles this for us.

[heunland]

Fyi, in the production release, there is no requirement to add a credit card if you opt for the STORJ token payment method. And yes, you can choose STORJ Token as your exclusive payment method.