Is it time to cut storage node operator payments again?
We now have 30,000 nodes
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If payments should be cut or not, should not be a function of how many active nodes are on the network. The more available; the less share of the ingress each node will have. This should make incentivize SNOs to have better nodes, since faster nodes win more races, and thus are more profitable.
If ingress slows very much, some SNOs will turn off and new SNOs might not find it financially attractive to join StorJ.
All in all, StorJ should cut operator payments if the overall cost model is not working for them - not if the amount of node operators rise to any arbitrary number.
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Much more important is more customers for the global network, in Europe, in Germany, worldwide. Cuts make the whole thing unattractive for the SNO. What is missing is advertising. Storj is so good, it just lacks publicity.
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storj is mostly not end user friendly, it is backend for user friendly software.
So mostly storj sell to companies who make end user products.
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Storj has repeatedly communicated that the previous payout changes were made to reach a sustainable long-term model and that no further reductions were expected.
In the official announcement about the December 1, 2023 payout changes, Storj explicitly wrote that they ādo not anticipate further payout rate adjustments for the foreseeable futureā ā see:
In the earlier āUpdate on Storage node payoutsā they stated that the goal was to āachieve the dual goals of Storjās long-term sustainability and that running a storage node can remain profitable in many locations.ā
And in the āUpdate proposal for Storage Node Operatorsā they again framed these changes as part of making Storj āsustainable long termā without just endlessly pushing SNO payments down.
If, after all of that, payouts are cut again, it will understandably feel like a betrayal of the community. You canāt tell node operators that the last reductions were necessary to secure long-term sustainability and then keep coming back for more.
On top of that, it would be a kind of marketing self-destruction. Storj itself has written that simple word-of-mouth from the community was enough to activate over 100 PB of supply in just a few weeks on the earlier network ā see:
That āmarketing engineā is the SNO community. Many of us actively promote Storj, answer questions, make tools and dashboards, write guides, and recommend the service. If Storj keeps moving the goalposts and cutting operator payouts again, you donāt just risk nodes going offline ā you poison that word-of-mouth and turn your strongest advocates into critics.
Cutting SNO payments again would not just be a financial adjustment; it would be breaking trust with exactly the people who keep the network running and who already do a huge amount of unpaid marketing for Storj.
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Payouts have dropped several times. And each timeā¦ the next drop wasnāt currently āexpectedā: saying that doesnāt mean anything. Today they may not see the need for another drop: and tomorrow they may. Thatās not good nor bad: just business.
With their new parent companyā¦ I think SNOs should anticipate parts of the business changing. However the fact that they raised customer prices (to compete on speed and features) and didnāt immediately cut SNO rates is encouraging. We donāt want Storj to compete solely on price: thatās a race to the bottom. Itās a better idea to be cheaper than AWS S3ā¦ but in that marketā¦ to be considered a premium offering. And that seems to be what theyāre going for.
There is room to cut more from SNOs. But I understand if Inveniam wants to let Storj stay on their current trajectory to become profitable in 2026ā¦ and not-rock-the-boat. If they do plan to spend money to grow their new Storj division: they donāt want to make decisions that may trim free-space at the same time.
TL;DR; Payouts could be cut: but if it did happen itās more than a year away: probably 2027.
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I donāt see this high price premium strategy working tbh. Waiting for a low price ācoldā storage product to be next.
As a SNO I would be ok with no egress payment for such a storage tier. I can add any amount of disk space but egress bandwith will always be my rarest ressource.
This is 2.5 years later and storj has been sold (did that happen?). I still sit at practically zero usage 8.4TB so Iām not a big player but if payments per stored GB were halved but usage went up 8x I would be much happier
What probably matters more is the number of unique IP blocks. And this has finally started increasing, even if slowly.
Besides, being able to claim some high number of nodes within the network also has value, enough to be used in marketing materials for financial institutions.
There is no need to cut from SNOs. I am writing a reply in the main thread about Inveniam since a few hours and will post it tomorrow after double checking. Thanks for your thoughts on this, it helps me to keep the whole thing organized
@Roxor I published my opinion about Inveniam now and I think I also answered indirectly to your thoughts about it:
@alpharabbit For a single home node you are right ā egress payments are usually not the main factor. But for larger setups the picture changes completely.
If egress is not paid or is paid significantly less than today, many people (including myself) would start to cut upload speed for their nodes. A part of my nodes (customer server nodes ā difficult and irrelevant to explain in detail here) are on connections where I pay around 1.00ā¬ for each additional TB of upload. From 2 TB uploaded (including cancelled and zombie uploads) Storj will pay roughly 1.50 USD in egress.
Many nodes in the network run on hosting servers or other metered connections, not on āfreeā home broadband. Those operators would do exactly the same as I would: protect their most expensive resource ā upstream bandwidth. Storj charges customers a lot for egress traffic, and thatās fine. But there is no need to cut from the SNO side who are literally providing that egress capacity and keeping the system alive.
A ācoldā storage tier without egress payout sounds attractive from the customer point of view, but it creates very bad incentives on the node side: the people with the most capacity and the most professional setups are also those who pay the most for upload. If you tell them āstorage only gets paid, egress is freeā, they will understandably throttle or deprioritize that traffic. Thatās the exact opposite of what Storj is trying to sell right now (fast, reliable, premium performance, not just cheapest possible cold storage).
@andrew2.hart Yes, the acquisition happened ā Storj agreed to be acquired by Inveniam, Storj will continue as a subsidiary and STORJ remains part of the ecosystem. So far all official communication says: node payments stay as they are, no changes to contracts or pricing, and STORJ keeps its current role.
Thatās exactly why I see another payout cut as much more than ājust businessā. Storj has repeatedly framed the previous reductions as necessary steps to reach a sustainable long-term model and explicitly wrote that they ādo not anticipate further payout rate adjustments for the foreseeable future.ā You canāt tell node operators āthis is what we need to be sustainable long termā and then keep coming back to the same lever every time something gets tight. At some point thatās not just an economic decision any more, it becomes a trust problem.
About your āhalve storage payout but 8Ć usageā scenario: I understand that logic on a single-node level ā I would also rather have a lot of real usage at a slightly lower per-TB rate than almost no usage at a higher rate. But that only works if the total economics line up for both sides:
- Storj needs enough margin to be sustainable.
- SNOs need enough margin per TB and per TB egress to keep disks spinning and bandwidth open long term.
If Storj introduce a lower-price ācoldā tier, that can be fine ā but they can do it by adjusting customer pricing and product tiers, not by quietly eating further into the only two levers SNOs have (storage and egress payout). Otherwise they risk not only nodes going offline but also destroying exactly the community marketing engine that brought them so much supply in the first place.
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Me too, but why should that happen?
Why should usage increase?
If you are a small home user, that want to backup its NAS ā Backblaze is cheaper and faster.
If you are a SMB user that want to backup your TrueNAS ā Backblaze is cheaper and faster.
If you need object storage ā your VPS will offer faster and cheaper storage
If you need a CDN (like TrueNAS for downloads) ā Cloudflare is miles cheaper and faster
You need to store data for only a short period of time (like 30 days of surveillance recordings) ā Backblaze also does not have a minimum storage time. Last time someone did that, STORJ showed how poor it performs when under real load.
I can only think of one niche thing, where storj might have a chance:
You need globally distributed media to work with in a Team but somehow your software does not allow for branche cache. So not Davinci Resolve but Premiere Pro. You are under 1PB, so B2 overdrive is out of the question. This is where STORJ Global collaboration might shine. Assuming that it really is faster than plain B2. Which I have my doubts.
So yeah, in the last 4y, IMHO not much has changed.
STORJ still does not make compelling offers to customers.
This is evident looking at the network statistics.
There is still basically no customer data in the network. You could almost store the whole Europe data in four U4 Ultrastar Data10 
@GreenGrinch I actually agree with your core point here: just cutting SNO payouts and hoping for ā8Ć usageā is not a realistic strategy. Price alone wonāt magically fix the demand side, especially in markets where Backblaze, Cloudflare and even cheap VPS storage are already well-established and often āgood enoughā.
Thatās exactly why Iām so sceptical when people propose ājust halve payouts and usage will go 8Ćā. From the SNO side itās a double risk: we take the hit on margins now, and there is no guarantee that the expected growth will ever materialise ā especially when Storj is still struggling to prove clear advantages in many mainstream use cases.
To give a concrete example: I first really looked into Storj when I was searching for a CDN solution for a larger web project. On paper, decentralized storage sounded interesting, but in practice it became clear that Storj was not the right fit: there was no simple drop-in integration with the CMS I was using, no mature plugins, and it would have required me to re-implement big parts of the media/storage pipeline just to test it. In the end I went with a more traditional CDN, simply because it integrated in an afternoon instead of becoming a multi-week side project. It was nothing about the price.
If Storj wants a ācold tierā or cheaper offers, this has to be solved on the product / customer side (positioning, reliability, integrations, enterprise deals, etc.), not by squeezing the only group that actually provides the storage and egress capacity.
One DC, one location. Do you remember?
and
Also, please check their speed over the time, especially at the evening 
And what you would do, when it will die?
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Cut SNO payments to achieve what exactely? It aināt gonna help anyone.
SNOs will be paid the same (if some SNO quit) or less (if nobody quits).
The Company will loose credibility in our eyes and will just annoy us more.
So whatās the point in bringing this up? Storagenodes are not running on air, you know! Electricity becomes more and more expensive. Why risk it to make old nodes quit too?
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What is the point of this discussion, donāt you have anything better to do.
2 of my nodes just broke, not gonna give a dime to even investigate in current state of a payouts.
well -2.
11 good to go.
hope it sums it up.
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Quo plus habent, eo plus cupiunt + boredom
remember the saying: if you donāt like the smell in the kitchen get the hell out,
is a dismissive way of telling someone to leave if they are bothered by odors, rather than offering to solve the problem
my take is that i dont care about the amount, i will not power down my NAS anyway
so if i get 1$ a year for the 2TB i have assigned to storj, greatā¦ if i get less than that great, anything above 0$ is a bonus
if my feelings for storj changes, its just to ask portainer to delete the stacks and then great i have more storagespace but since i dont need the space i might as well just let the nodes run
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21 posts were split to a new topic: Why there is no native integration on TrueNAS?
I dont need the space but storj doesnt either.
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Well, if someone doesnāt need extra money, I can provide my storj wallet so you can top it up. Monthly, weekly - as you wish.
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