And he still dosen’t know what to do… 
Just wait a month a put an updated one for 2025. 
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lol I really didn’t expect this, no.
But what I ended up doing is just starting a 1TB node to set all this up using Docker. Had an extra drive and empty bay so figured why not?
Now my main question is this: what wallet address to I use? The Storj receive address from Coinbase? My Etherium address? Something else? Doesn’t seem like it’s explained in the docs at all.
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That is what I do. I have setup my wallet address to my coinbase address, with help from arrogantrabbit Zksync lite or era - #9 by PieceKeeper
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This statement is incorrect. You can find the explanation in this section of the docs, and specifically here - including examples about the various options regarding use of Layer 1 or Layer 2 payout addresses.
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Definitely not trying to be a jerk about it, but the first time I saw the wallet mentioned was here: Storage Node - Storj Docs
This is just mentioned as a variable with no explanation of where to get it from. In the Payouts section as you linked it talks about the two different payout transaction methods. It doesn’t exactly say how to obtain any wallet address, just that you should have one and “control” it.
Personally, I am familiar enough with BTC to know what that means roughly speaking, but I am not familiar enough with ETH to know whether an ETH address will work or if I need a STORJ-specific one. What exactly is ZkSync (and what is ZkSync Era?) is not really explained at all, this thing was new to me. I followed the links to ZkSync Payments - Storj Docs which starts with Background:
L2 scaling aligns with our goal of bringing decentralized cloud storage to the masses - via more efficient and autonomous payments.
What is “L2 scaling”? Is it an Ethereum term? Is it related to it at all? Is ZkSync a type of cryptocoin? This is just super confusing.
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Storj is not in business of cryptocurrencies education. If you don’t understand a term you can always look it up:
Yes that makes sense. It was not clear to me that STORJ is an Ethereum token at first. In either case I don’t think it’s too much to add to the docs a short section on obtaining a wallet either by running one yourself or by using an exchange with links to the actual software. Perhaps this stuff is obvious to everyone else with a bunch of hard drives and I’m just dense but I still don’t know if I set everything up correctly since the docs and forums have warnings about using exchanges to receive payments (something about having to trigger emergency payouts with higher fees when using ZkSync without direct access to private keys, etc.)
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The warning is if you lose access to you private keys, on L2 there are some ways to wiggle your way back to your funds. The benefit of using exchanges is that they own keys, and manage the wallets for you; you are their customer, and access your account like a normal person with email and password, not some crypto mumbo jumbo.
Some consider it a drawback for some weird reason (like the dated mantra “not your keys – not your money” – while correct, is irrelevant, but storj has to say it because it’s the safest advice. Not in the best interest of the user though, but safest, and that also happens to be most expensive).
In the context of getting storj payout to USD in your bank the safest and quickest way is to receive at the exchange address on L1, and then swap for stablecoint or currency for about 1% at the exchange, at which point money can be sent to the bank account at no cost.
See how “not your keys not your money” causes your $10 from storj being at risk for the whole two minutes they are kept at the exchange wallet… you know, if exchange mismanages your wallet or shuts down during those two minutes…
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To reiterate rabbit’s suggestion, if you are in the US and cashing out to dollars, the easiest is to use the storj / L1 (ERC20 chain) address provided as a deposit address by your exchange. Then sell the STORJ when you receive it.
If you want hang onto the storj independently, or do… crypto stuff… then you may want to maintain your own wallet. But if you’re just cashing out then you’re talking additional transfers or exchanges and the fees eat up too much.
Also, big disclaimer. If you’re just starting out it will be a really long time till you get a payout. Between the holdback method built into storj for the first year or so, combined with the small earnings from 1TB or less, combined with the high threshold needed to clear a L1 payment (last month your payment needed to be around $50 to get paid, mine was only $25 with like 12TB so it’s held back).
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That makes sense. The plan is to add more drives, but I figured I’d set it up with a random unused drive first to just get the hang of the process.
Honestly, the plan might be to spend STORJ payments (whenever those come in) just to buy storage space for my own backups on a distributed storage system. I have a mirror ZFS for my main NAS + a mirror ZFS for backups in a separate building on the property. To be fully secure I’d like to add an offsite backup but given the volume something like S3 doesn’t make sense and Glacier is just too annoying to actually use for this.
Theres a fun new project that you can back up to! You can even pay with your Storj earnings!
Glacier === tape. It’s less annoying to use than tape – while the intention is the same – to be last resort save-the-day rescue type of deal. When everything else fails – annoyance related to restoring from glacier would be the least of your worries, at least that’s the intention.
I do the same – all data on zfs, replicated to remote zfs, and last 180 days worth of snapshots (because 180 days min retention charge, might as well use it) backed up to Glacier Deep Archive. Costs pennies, but may save the day, even though I plan to never have to use it.
Using hot storage for backup seems wasteful – you are paying for features you are not using, e.g. the whole “hot” part of it. For backup you want to trade speed of access and cost of restore for cost of storage because probability of needing restore is → zero, but probability of needing to store is 100%. That’s what needs to be optimized.
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In that case you may specify the Storj account deposit address and opt-in for zkSync Era (+3% bonus), then all earnings would go to your Storj account (+10% bonus). If the amount would be more than $10 the account will be upgraded to PRO. However, I’m not sure that it would happen, if there would be several transactions once a month each. So, it’s better to upgrade before that using a Credit card or deposit STORJ tokens worth not less than $10 and get 10% bonus on top.
Please confirm Era can be used to pay for the service — I believe there was a restriction for it to be L1 only. But I can’t find it. Or is the question silly, because why would an actual transaction occur when storj could simply adjust balances on the account.
Link to documentation is broken here: How can I use the STORJ token as form of payment? – Storj DCS but I can’t be arsed to create yet another account to report an issue.
Yes, the L2 zkSync Era is supported to deposit STORJ tokens. See
Thanks, I updated the article
and fixed the link.
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Well then let me repeat:
It seems that more can be done. If there is a goal to reach $130K as monthly payout total and we see $67K total payout in November, it seems there is room to offer much more freebies to potential customers. This would be better than this:
Instead of synthetic load Storj could more aggressively offer free testing to real customers, which would be much much better than synthetic load and could eventually turn more testing customers into paying customers.
I did not even ask for that.
I just stated that I find it strange how Storj space is being offered on the Valdi page now after it has been acquired:
It may be beneficial for Valdi customers to see the regular Storj prices, which are significantly lower than the ones displayed and this could potentially attract more interested customers to try out the storage product.
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This price for storage which is used as detachable volumes. If they want to use Storj instead, then they would need to use cunoFS, everything else would be slower and not so suitable for AI training or using by AI. Also customers prefers to use a complete and easy solution.
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Are you saying Storj is not being used for storage there?
Wasn’t that not just the idea of the initial partnership but also for the acquisition? That their customers can use Storj as storage solution?
The video below showcases how a potential customer can use a combination of VALDI distributed compute and STORJ decentralized storage for running an end-to-end Machine Learning training task quickly and seamlessly.
I’m saying that the underlaying storage maybe any, local or Storj, depending on the customers requirements, nothing in stone. The price for local storage may be included to the server’s price too, then the detachable volumes the only way to extend it.
The customer may get the same storage not as a detachable volumes, but as Storj + cunoFS, it’s up on them.
And what I am saying I do not see any cross-selling. if I search for the term “Storj” on that Valdi page there are 0 results. Instead storage is referred to as Valdi storage.
Same on the cunofs page: https://cuno.io/
Storj not mentioned together with the competitors and no direct link to the Storj page. At least the Storj name gets mentioned a couple time at the low end of the page.
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