@Bryanm @john It seems the payout for storage has changed to $1.49, was that intentional?
The actual value is here: storj/scripts/testdata/satellite-config.yaml.lock at f131047f1af820ffbdfc9c585a219953856f920f Ā· storj/storj Ā· GitHub
The easy 720h conversion end up with $1.4976 ā on a month with just 30 days you will get $1.4976 but on the next month with 31 days you will get $ 1.54752. Or on average over the year $ 1.5184 per month. $1.52256 in a year with Feb 29th.
3 Likes
Ahh, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. I guess this is a result of the change that merged the two different settings that determined this value on the satellite end. Nodes now get reported data based on a calculation on this value instead of a separate other value before.
The data is stored in a BIGINT field on the node end and gets rounded down. It might be better if the satellite rounds it to the nearest INT before reporting back to avoid confusion. Though that would still display a larger number for February. Alternatively the field could be a float to retain more decimal spaces.
One interesting note - prior to that change, storage nodes were paid with the assumption that a month had 730 hours, not 720. As part of the change to report the correct payment value, we corrected the rate to be in terms of a 720 hour month, so the rate actually went up (since the denominator got smaller). From a display point of view it looks like it got smaller, but as you know the display amount was just for display only. The actual payment amount increased from what it used to be.
I agree though that the display thing is weird. We could round to the nearest cent certainly. Is that desired for the Satellite to do that? Or should that be on the storage node display side?
4 Likes
Currently the storagenode doesnāt have any detail to round up or down. The database just has a value of 149 cents in pricing.db. If I had the choice, I would prefer to have full detail in the node dbās and round to the nearest cent on display. That way you can still calculate with full detail for totals. (I would do the same in my earnings calculator then, though Iād have to make some adjustments as the calculator assumes 720 hour months now. But this gives me the chance to match satellite calculations exactly.)
If you deleting data from test satellites, may be it also clever to turn off some of sub systems like reaper work, in 3 days of July I got significant amount of reaper ingress. Why needed to throw money away? If you delete all the data soon anyway.
1 Like
Personally it would be super interesting to know the number of new nodes after the changes. I feel like most operators are invested at this point and will be fine with a lower earnings while their hardware is running.
The main focus should be on keeping it reasonable to start running a node.
Hi @BrightSilence,
How much lower is it in relation to the previous payment, also 1$? 
And why it is going so low, if Storj customer pricing is one of the most competitive in this business sector? What do you think of this method of balancing the network by lowering so drastically enumeration instead of for example closing ability to register new email addresses and setting up new nodes, the first being the main argument raised by Storj behind those changes? Do you really feel that a combination of some of the lowest customer prices and such practices are beneficial for you in the long term timeframe or only for the company (those company benefits are of course discussable)? Is the company going for a big win or positioning itself intentionally or not intentionally at the very low end of the market? Do you think that Storj is running out of competitive business ideas and technical engineering if such practices are taking place? Why is it taking about two days for a new customer to navigate a new setup most of the time having to make some tough choices from the very beginning? I mean, dont get me wrong, its good to have so many options and ways to send and receive your data, however, why do one has to learn all this during the first two days and actually during the first two hours? And last but not least, how do you feel about geographic dispersion of storage node operators and the rate of change this dispersion is gravitating towards locations that are in the news every single day @BrightSilence, if you know what I mean. And of course this question I will allow myself to address also to Mr. @john and Mr. Ben Golub?
Cheers.
P.S.
@ Storj Team, particularly Mr. @john, may I ask if this new Adobe partnership is a result of airplane sales experience? This way or another, congratulations, best wishes to the Sales Team.
EDIT: Sorry for this tone, however, I strongly believe that such changes as you are serving to us are just simply unsustainable in a long term, especially if you plan to repeat those suprises on a constant basis. BTW, I just noticed a new website. Like it a lot. Also those e-mail notifications are top notch.
1 Like
I literally addressed the practical payout impact in that same post. And yeah, that 10-25% reduction in total payout still sucks. But it could have been a lot worse if they also lowered storage payout as initially planned.
Running a start up isnāt easy. You have to get a name and gain trust. Which is even harder if you run on a novel idea. We as node operators either come from a background of decentralization or donāt care, because weāre not the ones betting our data security on something new.
You may have seen me mention this before, as I have not been shy about saying it. I think itās creative corporate speech. Itās clear that the prime motivator was that they were running at a loss. Raising prices would bring them back to the previous scenario where it was really hard to find new customers who were willing to try something new. So what was left is to drop payouts.
I think the survival of Storj in a still profitable form for node operators is beneficial. For me, these new payouts still work. That may be different for you. But if this drop means the company can survive, then yes, I think I benefit long term.
Thatās a false dichotomy. And Iām not even sure what youāre asking.
No, you only have to look at the change logs and blueprints to see that this is clearly not the case. A lot of innovative technical improvements are being implemented regularly.
I guess Iām just not seeing this. You can use aws s3 if you want. And you can even start with just the web interface. If you think any other cloud object storage doesnāt have a bit of a learning curve to learn the ins and outs, youāre just wrong. Iām not saying itās perfect and Iām sure there are improvements to the UX they can make. But they have also improved a lot already and at this point I personally donāt see it as a hurdle. Keep in mind that Storj is primarily object storage aimed at developers.
I think lots of things. But primarily I think Storj is apolitical and my response will be too. To the extent that there is a risk of nodes being cut off from the internet, itās up to Storj Labsā statisticians to calculate whatās needed to mitigate that risk. As for data being stored in āgeopolitically uncomfortableā regions. It doesnāt matter. The entire network is built around untrusted nodes not being able to access data.
Now, Iāve answered your (perhaps rhetorical) questions to provide context to my previous message, but some of these topics veer a little too far away from the payout changes discussion. Lets try to stay on track here. You seemed to disagree with my message, but didnāt really address the contents. Your questions amounted to a lot of whataboutism, but Iād love to hear your opinion on the actual changes, given the context provided.
4 Likes
[ā¦] 10-25% reduction in total payout still sucks. But it could have been a lot worse if they also lowered storage payout as initially planned.
Running a start up isnāt easy.
Yeah, I know a bit about it. I have been interested in those topics more than 20 years ago by an early Apple investor and I do have some sector and entrepreneurship background directly associated with it.
I think itās creative corporate speech. Itās clear that the prime motivator was that they were running at a loss.
Yes, but why they are primarily targeting the SNOs. This is beyond my understanding.
Thatās a false dichotomy. And Iām not even sure what youāre asking.
Lets not get too philosophical. Best to formulate a direct question. My point here was that it looks like the company is trying to create barriers to entry by lowering the prices or trying to intentinally or non intentionally positioning itself at the very low end of the market all with mostly the cost of SNOs.
A lot of innovative technical improvements are being implemented regularly.
Yes, I have read that even the staking was proposed at some point. However, my attention is currently towards a final customer experience. I am recalling that the last time I checked there was no endorsed Python API associated to Storj. Not everybody is operating at such a close proximity to a C level as Storj [cheers to Storj hacking team].
If you think any other cloud object storage doesnāt have a bit of a learning curve to learn the ins and outs, youāre just wrong.
I have used more than one cloud object storage. My point here was that when I tried to set up Storj on my server from the very beginning I was not offered one but two paths to follow and I had to spend relatively significant time to learn about two of them to make a decision at the very beginning. Again, my point is that from a customer perspective it is rather a wrong approach. It should be easy to understand from the very beginning and other options should be provided in extremity clear way at slightly later stages of customer experience. My analogy was to tailscale.com. Their product is probably even more complex but at the very beginning much easier to use than Storj.
[ā¦] but some of these topics veer a little too far away from the payout changes discussion.
Maybe some but not all. I admit that some are just simply my reverberations. All in all, nobody is on a retainer here at this Storj forum.
To sum up, my point here, and the main reason that I raised voice was related to your statement āPayout per storage hasnāt changed at all and for egress itās $1 more than the maximum originally considered.ā I think this is extremely biased opinion expressed by you. I believe, it should not be pictured like this. It is 6 from 20 and a significant reduction of 10 to 25% and in many cases even more, overall.
Theyāre not. They have let some people go, which Iām sure wasnāt an easy decision. And they are shutting down 2 test satellites to safe on operating costs. Iām sure theyāve done even more behind that scenes that isnāt visible to us. But only payout cuts for SNOās could make the unit economics profitable to begin with. As those costs scale linearly with growth, while the others are more static. It was either raise prices or lower payouts. (or a bit of both) No other cost cutting would have made them profitable or even break even.
I didnāt intend to. Itās just many companies are both price competitors and big winners in their field. I really didnāt understand what you were getting at.
Iām still not entirely following what your point is. Yes, they aim for the lowest cost as a method of gaining market share. That doesnāt mean itās a bad product. With the barriers are you referring to barriers for SNOs? As stated, I donāt really buy that argument. Yes, higher network utilization would be beneficial to SNOs, but it would also mean less slack to onboard large customers. I donāt think this is a good argument for lowering payouts, but rather just a side effect of it.
I will agree that the UX can be better around how to make this decision, but I donāt agree with the second part. Why pick a direction for someone if the alternative might be a better fit for their use case?
Thatās the problem with quoting out of context. My whole message was about explaining why people werenāt up in arms about the eventual price cut. All I said was, we were expecting $0.75-$1.00 for storage and got $1.50 and we expected $1.50-$5 for egress and got $6. I calculated at the time that the upper range of their suggestions would be about a 55% pay cut. And that was presented as the best case scenario for us at the time.
So yes, limiting that to a 10-25% pay cut is a relief to most SNOs.
As for biasā¦ I am indeed biased towards my own opinion. Iām not trying to be a reporter here. Iām expressing my opinion and the way I see it. Thatās how forums work.
2 Likes
With the barriers are you referring to barriers for SNOs?
No, rather for the competition.
Why pick a direction for someone if the alternative might be a better fit for their use case?
Because otherwise a new potential customer is disorientated. People just want to get a working storage solution and be happy that the initial efforts went smooth. There is no point for them (in most cases) to study all the alternative ways at the very beginning. When they get familiar with the product it is good to give some additional options but I strongly sustain my opinion that no point in doing so at the very beginning of the journey.
All I said was, we were expecting $0.75-$1.00 for storage and got $1.50 and we expected $1.50-$5 for egress and got $6.
No we were expecting 1.5 and 20. Dont know what you are talking about.
So yes, limiting that to a 10-25% pay cut is a relief to most SNOs.
You are biased or being played.
Iām not trying to be a reporter here. Iām expressing my opinion and the way I see it.
Wake up. It was the huge cut, not a relief. Cheers.
1 Like
And sorry, really busy to make additional explanations on this topic of 1$ relief.
1 Like
The price of of paying sno is worse and itās really only gonna work out if it pushes out 50% of the network then everything would equal out. But reality will sit in and the network isnāt gonna shrink as much as they are hoping which will then push another payout drop to what was first announcedā¦ so it can easily get worse for payouts for us.
Iām more lost on your point now than ever with this. Iām probably overlooking something obvious.
I get that. I think an issue there is that the easiest way to get going for most developers is the S3 compatible API. Yet that is more costly for Storj Labs and negates a lot of the unique benefits of the product. (locally encrypted, highly parallel transfers, no centralized bottlenecks in the data path, higher maximum throughput etc.)
You want to also offer your customers the USPs of your product upfront. I donāt really know how to resolve that.
Maybe you were expecting that if you didnāt keep up to date on the large amounts of communication regarding these payout reductions. Most of us were expecting what they previously announced.
Nice arguments, broā¦
Itās interesting that you keep focusing on that $1, while the MUCH bigger change is that they didnāt drop storage pay at all. Do I see a little bias creeping in there? 
Yes, the $1 is rather meaningless. The other change since the initial proposal is not.
@BrightSilence Im not you bro, man. Yes, I got a feeling that you are overlooking quite a significant amount. I am not that much interested in a huge amounts of communication, prefer the facts. The case is that it is not a relief but this dropout is huge.
@deathlessdd I dont know if this is going to shrink 50% or not. My point is that the explanation of all those actions is wired. Also the approach, if the company is genuine about their reasoning, it is, shrinking the size of the network, it is much better for example to stop new SNOs entering the network rather then making a rat race (cc @BrightSilence).
Cheers and until next time.
1 Like
No itās not gonna shrink it will only grow since they are not closing on-boarding which at these prices it could still bring in more SNoS which would create another problem. Which would lower prices even more for usā¦since it becomes a new norm.
1 Like
new comers will not come if they see that low traffic, low prices. = no profit
2 Likes