Sorry I thought you were asking for official numbers regarding the test data stored on the network.
You can find them here: https://stats.storjshare.io/ and here https://storjstats.info/
No guessing required. With the knowledge which ones are the test satellites, this tells you how much test data is on the network.
I am new here. But I have been operating a node for some time. I built the node with the instructions and made it VERY robust with tons of storage. It costs me substantially more to run the node than I have ever been paid. I figured in time, the combination of storage I am offering and the quality/speed of my FTTH would make this a worthwhile venture.
This is simply not viable. Consumers pay far too much in energy costs to justify nodes of my size and now, the idea that the the payouts will be reduced mean I just need to more accurately understand if this node will ever be a viable option or if I have wasted my time and money. I really don’t want to just pull the plug on my node, but maybe that is the actual answer.
I would not not generally dismiss the marketplace idea though. When SNOs are cheap and get a lot of data, they are full early at some point. That’s when they would need to start to expand and bring devices online that would not be online anyway. So this ‘problem’ might level out in a way.
I don’t know if this model would work. It would require to take into account a lot of factors. But as said, to be able to set ‘my’ price would make the price discussion of this thread obsolete and is therefore appealing.
Hi everyone:
First, thanks for the opportunity to participate in this endeavor with STORJ and this community. My participation and contribution to STORJ has been a gateway to learning many things.
Bottom Line Up Front: I don’t know if I can take the emotional hit of seeing any reduction in STORJ compensation. I’ve been contributing for nearly 4 years anticipating growth and this seems to be moving backwards. When would we ever feel like our investment is more than just a worthy cause? I don’t believe STORJ is a not-for-profit company so isn’t it reasonable to expect a mutual ROI? To reduce payouts for production data is to depreciate my overall investment and I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like that’s fair regardless of the reasonability. I realize that you must make the same decision as it relates to your ROI, too. But I would hope to see you balance this equation to profitability while appreciating my investment, too.
I am surprised by the proposed reduction in SNO compensation for services rendered. It feels like a depreciation of my efforts. There are tangible and intangible costs to being an operator and it increases with node count. I believe my contribution was significant in helping to enable STORJ’s business model but I can’t see a pathway forward that doesn’t enable growth for us both.
While I have realized worthwhile intangible benefits from contributing to this project, I want to rise with you as you grow. There should be a mutual ROI that’s proportional to the tangible and intangible resources poured into this project.
I am hopeful that you can find a way to make this worthwhile for your investors. I would like to see a return from 4 years of tangible investments, at least. But I understand a little bit about math and I know you have to make this work on your end financially. I just don’t see how the SNO’s take a paycut and can emotionally sustain it.
I am looking forward.
While this sounds nice, it does not really help.
Surge payout adds uncertainty to the SNOs more than egress traffic already does. With surge payouts it is on Storj sole discretion and can change on a month to month basis. As SNO, even if you have an idea how much data you get, you have no idea into how much money this would translate. This makes any decision like expanding drives or proceeding with the node operation etc. a jeopardy.
Additionally compensation from network growth does not help when your disks are full or your home bandwidth is maxed out. If I cannot accept more data then I am left with what I have and your new low payout.
And furthermore it is totally unclear from this statement what growth could be really expected anyway. There is not even a hint if the Exabyte scaling requirement that you brought into the discussion is a requirement in sight.
With the proposed numbers I see a total strategic shift of Storj. It keeps moving to centralization because of the gateway services. But also because the payout numbers from the proposal will only work with expansion, which means SNOs who run on small hardware that they already have, will drop out.
Expansion will require investment, this means that the mantra ‘don’t buy’ will not work anymore but with the low payout you won’t earn enough to invest and to replace drives.
So while small SNOs will drop out data will centralize to the SNOs with the (already) deep pockets and big drives/servers.
This sounds like a massive shift in strategy intentional or not, but I think this will be the outcome.
It’s like running a restaurant and saying to employees, listen guys, we have some financial problems and we won’t charge customers 2$ more for the coffee, instead we will cut your salary by 80%, oh and btw don’t forget about working this weekend 
And don’t forget, we’re talking about growing the network… with 80% cuts.
The weirdest thing is that the entire ecosystem around nodes, was made so that it was really really slow profit to be made to begin with. Held amount, low ingress, etc…
My node started earning around 6 months of running… Which basically means I was losing money running node for 6 months, and around 6 month my node was running for free…
So in general the whole system around nodes is built so that you basically have to invest from the start, even if you have already hardware to run it on… And you starting to get few $ after 6 months… so the ROI in current system is pretty much around 2 years of running node. And now since Storj is growing and we will have more data and more ingress, but less money. So how do we scale? we don’t, because we don’t have the money to do so. So we gonna run nodes for free until hardware breaks and when it does, we can quit with satisfaction, knowing that we helped you earn money
And without the significantly distributed data redundancy that the Storj network was built upon. It’s difficult to understand why else Storj would even openly propose these significant pricing changes on their SNOs if the goal is not to explicitly drive their SNO base away from the network and move the data to a new model.
Lol. That’s all I have to say to that.
So much for Exabyte storage expansion…
I understand that stopping test traffic is a decrease in SNO money.
I understand that deleting test data is a decrease in SNO money.
BUT everything you are talking about here is based on the data, taking into account these test data, for which Storj is 100%, then even if you agree on a price of $0.05 and it turns out that 97% of the test data is online, it will be a loss.
Even according to the table you presented, + -50% is test data = then it makes sense to talk about something?..???
Based on the above, do not do calculations based on what you have now, because at least 50% of what we receive for is test data that drags Storj to the bottom and which they will be the first to refuse without expanding SNO payments. + 50%-75% reduction in the tariffs for SNO = calculate and understand that SNO loses anyway.
Understand the first thing to do is to stop synthetic data, after we all see the payments, in 1-2 months you can return to discussing prices for real useful traffic and volume. It’s stupid to talk about it now!
If you are so afraid of a complete rejection of test data and synthetic tests, justifying this by the need to reserve disk space, then leave the data already stored for a certain period (at the same time, implement for SNO the display of the volume of this data and the amount of traffic in case the download of test data resumes in the future ), but loading and, most importantly, unloading of test data must be stopped immediately! And only based on the data that we receive, we will be able to talk about the amount of remuneration for SNO and nothing else.
+ deleting test data volumes will clean up old nodes and they will start receiving new data and will give outgoing traffic, thus their payments will be balanced.
I suggest the following:
The 1st wave of decrease is a stop and removal of test data
2nd wave of reduction or increase in tariffs for SNO 1-2 months after the complete elimination of test traffic and data
Protecting test data and synthetic traffic, you follow the fear of lower payouts, stalling for time, but it is inevitable and it is better to lose test traffic and volume first, and then talk about prices for real data.
Uploading test data hasn’t happened for a long time already. And downloading it has slowed to a grind already. So it’s basically already that way.
That said, all the payout calculations in this thread have just mentioned what customers pay for storage and bandwidth and compared that with what storagenode operators would receive. These calculations have never included test data and traffic to begin with. They’ve ran on the assumption that test traffic would eventually be gone or negligible. We don’t need to wait for that data to be gone to know what the economic model will look like.
What technical options are there to reduce those costs? I have not much idea about internet backbones and routings and all this stuff, but the idea or question of direct peering comes into my mind. Something like this:
I have no idea but could it be possible and help to ‘peer’ directly with other networks to reduce network costs?
Isn’t there also even revenue sharing in place for referred customers? I don’t know how significant that is but it reduces Storj earnings even further but never gets accounted for in the calculations for payout.
Yeah, there is a partner program with revenue share. Not sure what the numbers for that are though.
Just checked, outgoing traffic to test satellites is about 20-25% today.
Even 20% is significant for calculating payments.
+ for storage of about 50% of the amount of payments
If you don’t understand it, all these people here who believe and try, but at the very beginning they are mistaken.
Good luck to all 
That sounds like a bug. Can you share the numbers? According to the public dashboard not a single of the test satellites has a significant amount of download traffic.
I see only 2 ways to end up with high download traffic. One of the test satellites has a lot of repair traffic for some reason. If that is the case I would like to investigate. We have deployed a few changes that could cause that. Or your node is running graceful exit. That would also transfer a lot of pieces.
Don’t speak for all of us. I have installed the lovely payout script that is available here in the community. It gives me a very good overview about my income per satellite. I copy paste that into excel, wipe out the test data, calculate my payout with the new payout rate. Yes it is that easy. No guessing is required. I could even update the script to just show me that result directly but I think that is a task for later once we know how the transition will look like.
Yes, this is an old and complete node, but why should I expand now if I know prices will go down?
Why should I expand if I understand that the test data will be removed and then the space will be filled with new data?
In fairness, small and free nodes really have less outgoing traffic to test satellites. BUT it exists and Store Lab pays for it on its own, and most importantly, it pays 50% for storage (out of 8.5TB, 3.4 + 2T = 5.4TB) of disk space is taken up by synthetic data only to reserve space.
once again, test data needs to be deleted, stop paying for it, stop sending test traffic.
And in order for Store Lab to understand I want to continue on mutually beneficial terms, I want to expand and install new equipment BUT the calculations must be predictable with the correct starting point. We all know that it is impossible to guarantee traffic and volumes from clients, but only stupid people can make forecasts on test traffic and make investment forecasts and calculations based on this. Once again, based on this, the first unpleasant wave of payout reduction is a complete rejection of test traffic and volume, and then we will meet and discuss prices and the future…
Starting with “contains strong language” and ending with “I will not reply to this post” pretty much invalidates everything in the middle.
Join the discussion, exchange ideas, be prepared to be challenged.
Is it this?
Maybe membership here could also be rewarding (Backblaze is there):
