Best would be if Storj keeps paying normal payout rate for it.
Second best is lower rate
Third best no payment.
If the rate is lower than normal, then SNO should have an option to choose how much space he wants to allocate to such an endeavor. This could be achieved through a dedicated satellite the SNO has to subscribe to. However downfall is, that if there are not enough SNOs or not enough space, then the quality of such a free network and performance would suffer, meaning that it poses the risk that it will not convince customers to make use of it.
So at the end, to ensure that the quality is similar to the regular Private network Storj would probably have to pay the regular rate for it.
Even if we are talking about āunusedā space, donating this for whatever reason would cause wear to the disks and also lower my share of paid data because of more races lost. So a big NO from my side.
I have the impression that you are somehow associated with them, you have tried to promote them on our forum many times. I would suggest you stop doing this. The team knows about their existence.
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. I am sorry that I must correct you - thatās not the case. Iāve probably made over a hundred suggestions to Storj over the years on how I believe Storj can grow its business which you seem to forget. That is quite the opposite of being associated with them. So donāt be silly, your impression couldnāt be farther from the reality.
If you want to take aim, donāt shoot the messenger, shoot the real competitors. They seem to have the same business model like Storj (however I donāt know what technology they use) and as Germany based company they have a big local advantage and can play the German card in Europe and especially in Germany, which is probably the biggest cloud market and the market with the greatest cloud potential in Europe. I donāt like their advantage and I donāt like to see them grow. I would like to see Storj would react to them with a strategy of better presence and visibility and take a more proactive stance in competing with them head-on as they are clearly directly competing with Storj for the enterprises here that are looking for cloud storage.
I have suggested already many many times for example to localize the Storj website, I have made suggestions on geo-fencing on GDPR, etc. to better target local markets. If it were up to me I would even consider a EU/German based subsidiary of Storj and a local sales team and support to take on the competition directly and donāt let them grow in peace.
You have edited your post and deleted your statement on them that they have copied a lot from Storj, so I cannot quote it anymore. But I could not agree more. Itās clear that they are having a very close eye on Storjās activities and adapting them for the local market. Theyāve even copied Storjās calendar system for scheduling appointments - https://storj.io/contact-sales.
Knowing about their existence is not enough. I think itās more essential to take a more proactive approach. They have already announced plans to found a US subsidiary and enter the US market. So Storj should not only be aware of them, but better be prepared for them. Instead of waiting for them to make the move, Iād suggest beating them in their home market while theyāre still small.
No, Iām not. This is why itās so confusing. Just please do not post links to promotions, you may just describe by words. We do not want to promote some other cloud providers, right? 
Your suggestions are passed to the marketing team. Please, continue to suggest, I think they are useful!
The team is well aware of them, thank you for your suggestion, it was shared before.
Way out of line here, Alex.
@jammerdan has been active in this forum for many months with ideas for expanding the reach of Storj and has pointed out many promotions from many providers before.
He has contributed many ideas for Storj use cases and so far most of his many suggestions seem to have the networkās best interests at heart, including pointing out issues with Node performance that came to light during the stress testing.
I donāt think your comment is particularly fair. 
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Maybe I failed to express my feelings. Mentioning the same provider multiple times on the forum in many unrelated threads and posting links to their sites and especially promotions is simply against the forum rules.
I have not taken any action because I know @jammerdan to be a good person with good intentions, so I would appreciate it if they would just stop posting links to them.
And I know that @jammerdan does not seem like a forum member who registered on the forum for this purpose, especially long before this provider appeared. That is why it is so confusing to me.
I think this is a wonderful idea. Sure, some of the customer teams using Select is on it purely due to regulatory issues. By offering free capacity on the more performance and more resilient public side of StorJ, youāre giving the customers developers a free sandbox to to internal testing against. This could over time lead them to switch entirely.
Itās a financial bet that Iām willing to partake in as a node operator, itās a gift that I think the customers would be happy to test out, and itās a move that Iād be happy to see StorJ take,
I donāt see how a promotion like this would benefit anyone. If the customer requires SOC2, thatās not anything any amount of discounts will change.
And if Iām a company that needs SOC2 compliance for my data, free non-SOC2 storage is worth exactly what Iām (not) paying for it.
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For me it is not confusing at all. It is always a good practice to look at what competitors are doing. There is a lot one can learn from them. And specific to that company, it may even be a great opportunity for Storj to acquire them and make them a Storj subdivision for the European market in Germany. That would be totally amazing.
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Iām agree with you, just please do not post their promotions links
A dedicate forum area where can post interesting information and offers from competitiors would certainly be a good idea.
Itās a public forum, itās indexable by Google, this increases a promotion effect of other companies. We are not interesting to promote non-partners or non-customers.
In the past, I recall an area called āThe Loungeā or something - it was hidden and accessible only to users with a specific level of clearance. This type of restricted access could be beneficial in preventing unwanted search engine indexing, while still providing a valuable pool of information on what competitors are doing for Storj. By creating a similar feature, we could maintain a private repository of competitor insights, allowing authorized users to access and contribute to the knowledge base without exposing it to the public or search engines
Yes, the Lounge is available for Regulars only.
Links to promotions are still not a good idea.
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You gotta pump those post numbers up my dude! I cannot imagine how you of all cannot keep a regular member status 
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Why addvertise their offerings for free? Storj team can keep an eye on them without postings on this forum. Itās part of marketing teamās job description.
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Lol. This is not advertising. Do you really believe a Wasabi or Impossible Cloud will get 1 more customer because someone posted their marketing stench here?
Some Storjlings keep repeating that they are a small team. So I am sure they canāt have their eyes everywhere and miss everything. So it is more of a help to collect interesting ideas at one place.
No, but having one more external link helps position competitors site higher in the search output.
There are plenty of spammers posing links in AI generated comments already on this and all other forums precisely because it works.
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Not if it is an area that requires specific privileges to access it
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