That’s already happening. Turns out, if you prepare software to work on unreliable WAN and an absolute mixture of storage solutions, it deals with potentially shitty in-house data center LAN and storage pretty well too.
I don’t think they bother with the token though.
You know, this made me look at the bump in price of the STORJ token.
I sold my monthly amount on May 5 which was right BEFORE the pop. My $40 coulda turned into almost $60 if I had been slower!
Or to $20. And you will never know which it is until after. And that’s a core of the problem.
When you want a coin get listed on a big exchange costs a lot off money.
150 k and much more. Many projects are dreaming to get in this position like storj and then here it’s always the same 3 people who wants to get rid off the coin everytime there is a price movement because there is a change they could loose a few dollars.
You are entirely missing the point. For those “many projects” their goofy coin is a goal, a product, a speculative asset. For storj – token is a distraction. Storj is not in business of selling air and aspirations. It’s selling real tangible storage. For real tangible money. Operators also earn real tangible money. And then there is this goofy double conversion into volatile fake token nobody benefits from.
That’s you think what the problem is? No. The problem is storj is hemorrhaging value by virtue of pumping funds though volatile instrument. That value goes to pockets of “maket participants” who arbitrage storj very easily. That’s the problem. That money could instead go to a (gasp!) payment processor.
That’s why I don’t think “facilitating international payments” justification for token existence is a distraction.
And only 3 people are not happy and saying this over and over again and everybody else is missing the point every time.
Counting noses is not an argument on merit. The issue exists regardless of whether three people notice it or three hundred. just one is enough. If you want to continue to have this conversation bring actual arguments. So far your arguments amount to “token good because crypto”, “nobody else complains”, and “millions of lemmings cannot be wrong”.
Let’s start with you. What is the benefit to you of having your earnings force-converted into a volatile token, unconditionally, at a time you do not control, instead of being paid in the currency they were earned in?
That conversion pushes price risk onto the operator for an indeterminate amount of time. The operator is compensated for running a storage node, not for carrying Storj’s token exposure.
Taking uncompensated price risk is dumb. Making vendors carry it because it benefits Storj is exploitative.
In your recent explanations, you stated that around 80% of small customers are economically unprofitable and that the payments they make do not even cover operational costs such as API usage, support, identity verification, and infrastructure expenses.
At the same time, a large part of this financial pressure is effectively being transferred to SNOs through payments made in a token which you repeatedly describe as having “no ownership rights, no guarantee of value, and no responsibility attached to it.”
This creates a serious contradiction:
If the token has no value, no obligation, and no responsibility behind it, then how can it be used as a real form of payment for the operators who maintain the network?
And if the token does in fact carry real economic value as a payment mechanism for network operators, then it is not logically consistent to simultaneously claim that there is absolutely no responsibility toward it.
You cannot on one side use the token to compensate the network’s operators for real operational work, while on the other side deny any responsibility regarding the economic role and value of that same token.
This is no longer just a technical or economic discussion. It can also raise serious legal and regulatory questions, especially when network operators are investing capital, hardware, bandwidth, and long-term participation based on these payments.
(every month, for the last ten years…)
Storj: “I’m offering to pay nodes in tokens”
Thousands of Nodes: “I agree to be paid in tokens”
Storj: “I have paid you in tokens”
But it feels good to complain. And dream of changes. Maybe tomorrow a new service will launch, that pays more for space, and uses fiat or stablecoins? It sounds like it could be super popular! 
Today though… I understand the frustrations. If anyone is putting midsized nodes up for adoption, let me know! At least make more than your graceful exit…
“If you don’t like it why are you still here” is what people say when they cannot defend the design on merit.
Self-selection at work. Node operators who were bothered by this more than us left long ago.
This number came from A Follow-up on the New Minimum Usage Fee – and a Request for Feedback, so an official source.
I’m bothered by this. I did not leave.
The problem isn’t that they pay out in tokens; the problem is that the timeframe SNOs have to sell the tokens is too short.
The dashboard states I earned X USD, but a few hours after the payout, my wallet shows 40% less. That is the problem.
Exactly this. We’ve definately seen people leave (and often make goodbye posts). We’re at 33k+ nodes (and growing) even with SNOs who’ve chosen to move on. The net increase speaks for itself.
That doesn’t make much sense: the merit is people like being paid in tokens - often as an alternative to no payments at all. Getting paid something, instead of nothing, is very popular. Perhaps being paid in fiat or stablecoins would be more popular… but the idea that token payouts lack merit is laughable.
Quite literally more nodes come online seeking token payouts every day.
Which means you’re still not bothered enough. So am I, at least for now 
I don’t know who I heard with this idea from…
…but imagine if instead of Inveniam buying Storj it was Amazon. And they continued to run the network as-is, but rebranded as “AWS S3 Community Edition”. And paid us in Amazon Gift Cards!
Hold crap we’d probably hit 100k nodes in a month! 
The problem is a token that is volatile, has low adoption, a low price/market cap and low liquidity.
The concept of choice does not seem to be common. Imagine the SNO could self select if he wants to get paid in crypto, stablecoins, bank transfer, giftcard, Paypal or whatever he chooses. Such solutions are available.
Like not getting compensated for thrash that is stored on SNOs hard drive solely for Storj purposes.
If you are happy, it’s great. Just let SNOs have a choice how to get paid. Nobody wants to take away the fun from you, if you enjoy fiddling with the STORJ token, conversions, L1 and L2 networks, fees, exchanges, and getting less than what you should receive. Some enjoy that, some don’t. But it is clear that this isn’t the future. At least not for the purpose and reasons Storj is claiming they need the STORJ token for.
It just came in:
Date of Delisting Token Name Ticker 08.05.2026 Storj STORJ
It seems it is not just the price that is going down. Now people have to find another exchange. What an amazing token. So much fun.
I agree. and Storj should focus on its strengths and not on its weaknesses. The STORJ token is unnecessary and is becoming irrelevant for the idea of global mass payouts. As times have changed there are other and better solutions today that offer choice, less fees, less volatility, easier handling.
The policy hasn’t changed. Payouts will be made in STORJ tokens, not fiat currency, PayPal, or any other tokens or blockchains. I’m not aware of any changes related to payouts or support for more payout options beyond STORJ tokens on L1 (Ethereum) or L2 (zkSync Era). For now, for clients, STORJ tokens continue to offer additional advantages over fiat among the available payment methods for Storj services.
Storj is not focusing on tokens, but on providing services and adding new features and tighter integration between Object Mount and the Storj network, among other features. Changing payouts is not in a backlog.
More of a bummer when 2 of my nodes released the “held” funds this month.
Lets me translate this from corporate-restricted moderator-speak:
Dear node operators. We heard you loud and clear. We just don’t think you matter enough to spend resources on.
We can burn time on dashboard rearranging, Object Mount, and whatever shiny feature needs to be mentioned in the next update. Fixing the part where operators get force-fed a volatile token, eat exchange fees, deal with delistings, and sometimes receive materially less than the USD amount shown in the dashboard? Sorry, that is boring. Also it helps you, so it is not in the backlog.
And frankly, why would it be?
You will keep eating it. You will keep providing storage. You will keep pretending this is fine. Some of you will even fiercely defend this. New node operators keep joining. Supply is surplus. The network has no immediate reason to treat operators like vendors instead of disposable plumbing.
In other words: Storj has resources for features Storj wants. Storj has no resources for payout choices operators want. The token remains mandatory because the people forced to touch it are the only ones with no leverage.