It absolutely does not. These are not shares. The token value implies the value of the token only, not of the project or company.
For all intents and purposes it is fiat money. Customers pay dollar amounts, Storj Labs takes a cut in dollar amounts and SNOs get paid in dollar amounts. For purposes of the economic model the tokens might as well not be there. As for generating. These tokens were created all at once when the contract was created. They aren’t being generated anymore. But since the token value changes don’t cause price increases or decreases for the product, it’s value is also not that much tied to the product. And this is a good thing. Otherwise the product would just have become a lot more expensive with the recent price increases.
Yeah good luck with that… I don’t think forcing people to buy your product is usually very successful.
You would probably very reasonably get the response that you shouldn’t have created capacity you knew there was no demand for.
What is your argument for the “SNO’s are being kicked about” part? It takes about a year to a year and a half to earn back the investment in an HDD that would usually last 5+ years. So you can make a decent profit on any hardware you can provide to Storj (as long as you make an effort to match it to realistic demand). If you were expecting a get rich quick scheme, I think the problem is not how Storj rewards SNO’s, but a matter of unrealistic expectations. Your service just isn’t worth as much as you think.
If you don’t think there is currently enough data coming in… then don’t be a SNO. Enough people make that decision and there are fewer nodes and more data per node. This will balance itself out until there are just enough SNOs happy enough with the amount of data they get. Which means it by definition will never become extremely lucrative to invest. Because you are competing against people who use existing equipment that is already online. So with no costs at all, I’ll take any income I can get. My standards will be quite a bit lower and I won’t be alone. So adjust your expectations accordingly.