I strongly suggest that Storj does their very own homework before - to quote @John -
grinding their SNOs to a pulp.
Suggestions on cost cutting, revenue increase and even marketing and targeting customers have been made. Many of them.
I fear that the proposed lower ends of the range ($0,75/$1,50) (storage/egress) will not work for me. Operating nodes at a loss without prospect of positive returns would mean to shut them down immediately even without graceful exit. To me it looks like that with these low proposal node operation is only viable at scale, which will lead to fewer larger nodes and more centralization. Because with smaller nodes your earnings will not be going anywhere.
For now I cannot tell what my actions would be regarding the proposed ranges but quitting node operations completely certainly would have to be seriously considered. It is becoming clear that the Storj mantras to not invest and to use only what you have are going to be no longer true for a viable operation.
Payout proposal
| Storage | $1,5/TB | I strongly speak against lowering current storage payout price because if a node is full egress drops significantly and the SNO is basically left with the storage payout. This makes it less viable to run smaller nodes. Also storage costs seem not to be the major issue. So $1.50 is and should remain the absolute minimum. It should rather be raised than lowered which could open additional room for lowering payout for egress. |
| Egress | $10/TB | For regular egress and repair traffic. Personally, I would be even willing to waive the repair fees for Storj, however it is true that if there is no price tag for it, there is no incentive to use it economically. |
Alternate option
| Storage | Egress | Repair | |
| $2 | $2 | $2 | My calculation claims that this could work, yet this would have to be verified more thoroughly. This payout scheme would reflect one idea that I had in the past, as to why distinguish between egress and storage at all but also puts the focus on reducing egress costs as this is where the actual economic model fails the most and causes biggest losses. |