Update on August 2020 Payouts

I think there needs to be a system that is similar to some mining pools - a node operator accumulates tokens in an “account” and can either withdraw them when he wants or set a threshold for automatic withdrawal. Withdrawing amounts lower than x you have to pay a transaction fee.

Storj could do this a bit better - allow the node operator to accumulate money in the account as STORJ tokens (converted at the time of payouts) or USD which gets converted to tokens at the time of withdrawal.

That account could also be linked to Tardigrade account allowing a node operator to use the Tardigrade service without paying any transaction fees (assuming the usage is small enough for the node earnings to cover it).

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If you are not getting paid more than $10 in Storj to meet the threshold what’s the issue? Are people saying they can’t live without a few Storj tokens each month? Surely $2 bucks worth of tokens is not the end of the world?

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I think you should use the Stellar Network

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Honestly, as a new SNO, and a small one, I don’t like the idea of such a high threshold. Maybe lower it a bit, like 2 months worth of payout(of a new SNO)

What if we get DQ before we meet the threshold?

I’m still thinking about how to manage the 5 hours minimum downtime, and now this.

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13 posts were split to a new topic: Can I Operate more than one (1) Storage Node using different Payment Addresses for each Storage Node?

You would still receive the 1.99 regardless of the DQ because your node had already earned that.

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So DQ’ed nodes will ignore minimum payout value and I’ll receice $1.99 with $10 minimum payout wall?

A lot of small SNOs are not going to like it. Potential new SNOs will also be extra cautious because of this, as even big nodes most likely won’t get to see a single payment in first 3 or 4 months.

At this point why not switch to daily payments and let people withdraw the earned amount anytime they want as long as they pay txfee and offer a free withdrawal per month or per amount earned? This will also help stabilize storj token price.

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As a long time SNO, I can say that I personally don’t have a problem with this. I also think that while it is reasonable to set a minimum payment threshold, it will likely give some apprehension to some new node operators. How many people would actually be bothered by this is difficult to say. Probably a minority, as hopefully most people already realize this is a long term commitment.

I like the idea of a miner pool like system where there is a minimum threshold and if the SNO wants to withdraw earlier they would have to pay the fees. In practice this may not actually give a chance for SNOs to get their payment any earlier since it is they might not even have enough accumulated credit to even pay for the fees for the first few months. This would likely require a lot of work by the Storj team though, so I doubt this could be implemented any time soon.

This is a ton of great feedback about the change we are considering making in the payout process, thank you for contributing everyone! This change would be a step in the direction for where we want our payouts process to get too. I know a-lot of you folks have been SNOs for a while and I hope you would agree that our payout process has constantly been improving and becoming more transparent. We still have alot of improvements we can make as some of you have pointed above, so we will continue to work on it!

Part of the reason we are considering this change is that just last week the cost for a single transaction was around $4.00 USD. Unfortunately, this is not scalable; we do over 5k transaction per month so that would end costing around 20k for a month’s payout cycle. Over half of those transactions are for less than $10 USD.

I would like to address a few specific things from the conversation thus far:

  • Can I request to be paid in eth?
    – No you can not be paid in ETH, we payout all SNOs in STORJ token.

  • Dashboard updates
    – Depending on transaction fees at the time of the payouts we may or may not decide to make this change. If we do the dashboard will not be updated but it will be something we have our engineering team work on right ASAP so that SNOs can get an updated view of their nodes.

  • New Nodes not getting payments right away is not ideal; we are still thinking about how we might be able to address this problem. If you have any Ideas please let me know!

  • Long term vision
    – We want to make it possible for SNOs to “withdraw” their earnings when every they would like. We have been researching a few diffrent approaches to make this possible and we feel like this is going to give the SNOs the most transparency and flexability!

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I agree with most of the comments here about making a minimum payout, that makes a lot of sense, but I do feel that it will affect new SNO operators the most, and they will be very confused as to why they did not get a payment after month 1, month 2, etc. I suspect a lot of SNOs might not even know about this forum, so they would not see this, unless they needed help.

As someone above suggested maybe after X number of months a payment is made no matter what the balance is, or just move all payouts to a 2 or 3 month schedule. You’d get the savings on the transfer fees, and your SNOs would still get regular payments.

I’d still like a way to see payments broken down by month for tax purposes for those of us running this as a side (tax write-off) business.

I have some idea, maybe would better do the floating threshold?
For example, today we have transaction fee 4$ on day of payouts, let’s set threshold >= 5$
On the next month we have transaction fee 0.5$ on day of payouts, let’s set threshold >= 1$
The main idea is a threshold not a constant and depends on the gas fee. I think it will be fair to both sides.

How about an option for the “Larger” SNOs to pay their gas fee’s out of their Monthly payment?

I.e. the amount of GAS to send a payment is:
Gas >10% of montly earnings = Storj Pays Gas
Gas <10% & >5% of monthly earings = SNO’s get the option to pay the Gas from their earnings.
Gas <5% of monthly earnings = SNO always pays their own Gas fees

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Well this blew up instantly lol.

I agree with minimum payout threshold, it should have been there to start with. Perhaps add the automated threshold calculation based on the transaction fee, as was suggested.

@S0litiare Good idea but this would cause thousands of small transactions to generate loss for Storj for no good reason, there should be a minimum.

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This raises a much larger question regarding the payment process the storj uses to pay node operators. On the 13th Aug the cost of a transaction hit a peak of $7.367. These spikes have happened in the past, so are not new.

The problem is that node operators also have to pay such transaction fees, so if they are becoming to high for storj they are also becoming to high for node operators, especially small node operators.

Even sites like instashift that allow direct conversion of storj to a range of currencies are problematic for small node operates - instashift currently requires a minimum of 150 storj to allow a transaction of which 8.6 are taken as a fee. Which for the test system I was running would have meant earning enough storj to cash out after 30-40 months.

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This reads like there’s a misunderstanding with the amounts you’re being paid. The payment amount, and the threshold, are both set in USD, not STORJ. The amount of STORJ you get will be based on your total USD payment at the time of the payment, not on what that would have been in STORJ if it had been paid in the preceding month. You’ll still be able to sell the STORJ as soon as you get it.

Count me in the category of SNOs who doesn’t understand why anyone, other than perhaps a brand new node operator, would be remotely concerned about not getting a <$10 payment “on time”.

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Not at all. In general you would prefer getting paid when Storj price is low and sell when Storj price is high. Accumulating Storj should happen on the SNOs end, not on Storjs end.

Of course I can sell them after I have received them some day, but that it not exactly the same like selling them when I want to sell them, right?

Generally speaking it is an absurd choice of a payment/transaction token that requires an expensive 3rd party asset to carry out the desired low amount high volume transactions. This whole idea is strategically flawed and setting a payment threshold is just a bandaid.

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Just as an example, I am sure you are aware of it but I keep saying it: A single Dogecoin transaction costs 1 Dogecoin. At currently 1 Dogecoin around $0.0034 5k transactions would cost you USD 17 and SNOs could move their earned reward off their wallet for the same ridiculous low 1 Dogecoin cost. Even if a Dogecoin would reach $1 what will never ever happen as there is no limit on the number of Dogecoins, that would cost Storj ‘only’ $5k instead of $20k now.
So to me this looks like how it should be for a utility coin that is used to transfer low amounts but high volume.

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Storj could even let the SNO participate in the money they save on transaction cost. If a SNO opts in to halt payment for lets say 6 months, Storj saves 6x4 = 24 USD at current prices. This goes all into Storjs pockets. It would surely help reducing the number of payouts, if the SNO receives a share of that money.

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@brandon

i would say adding a way to withhold payout until a SNO wants it paid out will also be a possible way to limit transaction fees, ofc this would mean that there could be added expenses for Storj as SNO would be able to hold the dollar value and exchange to storj tokens at favorable ratios…
duno how much that would actually change anything long term… but an issue with the whole being able to withhold the payout…

i duno, doesn’t really have a solution… but personally i wouldn’t mind having the option not to get my payout right now, and i’m pretty sure i would get past the minimum requirement every time…

ofc might not be many people that feel like that, but i think paying out all the time is a mistake… give users some control of it… maybe have a max value also tho… before it will payout atleast some of the value.

you could also pay people for not getting paid lol
gotta love the irony of the universe lol

well long story short.

I for one wouldn’t mind being able to control my payouts, and i doubt i’m alone in that…