Yep, pretty much on the same boat here.
There are some very vocal SNOs here but it’s unclear how representative they are of the totality.
Clearly Storj are going to have to rethink their initial proposal but I’m not entirely convinced the network would collapse if they just pushed through with the proposed remuneration.
You have to offer compliance to GDPR (etc) first otherwise all that is pointless
It’s not just the GDPR compliance that is lacking: https://wasabi-support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002145572-What-third-party-compliances-have-been-attained-by-Wasabi-
Wasabi is certified for compliance with CJIS (Criminal Justice Information Services), FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act) and MPA (Motion Picture Association) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations).
These would add tons of additional use cases and potential customers.
This is a HUGE point.
I use StorjDCS for my Personal backups.
Would use it for backup and co in my company- but they dont trust it, instead we are using backblaze, wasabi etc 
In Germany Certifications and especially GDPR are showstoppers 
I would probably eventually leave if it’s 0 or close to it. But I have 2 sets of nodes. Internal, which are basically paid for by existing always on hardware and external which have energy costs just for Storj. That external set will just be gone if it no longer is profitable. As for the internal nodes, they do cause system slowdown, so they need to still make some decent money for it to be worth it. And then there is the question of expanding when the node fills up. That’s no longer worth it when the payout is too low. So I’d have to start exiting nodes when my space fills up for other uses.
That’s why I say the node should cover energy cost + HDD purchase with some acceptable profit margin. Otherwise the nodes will just eventually erode to 0.
I would leave if the payout was zero and there was no hope in it going up. I am not opposed to doing something for free, but it has to be for a good cause or I should get something (not necessarily money) out of it. I could seed some Linux ISO for free, no problem. However, running a node for free so that the company can sell my resources and earn money (without sharing it with me) - not really interested.
This should be the blueprint for Storj to follow, imo it’ll never amount to anything without it because its businesses that really use these types of services in a big way.
Thanks for the link, useful to see so much info on the topic in one place.
This has already been addressed in the Twitter Spaces, see summary post:
For those that don´t want to read all the 30 pages of legalese:
The article specifically states on P30:
Use Case 1: Data storage for backup and other purposes that do not require access to data in the clear 84. A data exporter uses a hosting service provider in a third country to store personal data, e.g. for backup purposes. If 1. the personal data is processed using strong encryption before transmission, and the identity of the importer is verified, 2. the encryption algorithm and its parameterization (e.g., key length, operating mode, if applicable) conform to the state-of-the-art and can be considered robust against cryptanalysis performed by the public authorities in the recipient country taking into account the resources and technical capabilities (e.g., computing power for brute-force attacks) available to them,80 3. the strength of the encryption and key length takes into account the specific time period during which the confidentiality of the encrypted personal data must be preserved, 81 4. the encryption algorithm is implemented correctly and by properly maintained software without known vulnerabilities the conformity of which to the specification of the algorithm chosen has been verified, e.g., by certification, 5. the keys are reliably managed (generated, administered, stored, if relevant, linked to the identity of an intended recipient, and revoked), 82 and 6. the keys are retained solely under the control of the data exporter, or by an entity trusted by the exporter in the EEA or under a jurisdiction offering an essentially equivalent level of protection to that guaranteed within the EEA, **then the EDPB considers that the encryption performed provides an effective supplementary measure.”**
I’ve been reading along this topic for some time now and I have a few points I’d like to add to the conversation. For transparency, my company operates Storj nodes and we have been hosting these nodes for a while now within datacenter-grade infrastructures along with huge networking capabilities.
The main thing I’d like to address is bandwidth cost. I know that a lot of SNOs are individuals running nodes from home with consumer ISP services. It is crucial to understand the key differences between consumer (or even business) ISP offers for internet access and datacenter infrastructures that run on an entire separate layer. What actually costs money when it comes to communication services is bandwidth. ISPs don’t charge customers based on their bandwidth usage even though bandwidth represents what they have to pay for. They instead assume that all of their customers consume a certain amount of bandwidth on average and come up with fixed rates including margins. Datacenters don’t pay for ISP services because they have their own fiber lines connected to distribution centers and route traffic through bridges by partnering with ISPs and other datacenters in order to optimise traffic flow, avoid congestion and most importantly ensure that data going from one point to another always takes the shortest path possible. The more distance you have to cover, the more bridges you have to operate and thus pay for. As a route is being utilised by more and more people, everything comes back to bandwidth needs over bandwidth capacity. This is why datacenter and ISPs top expenses comes from bandwidth consumption. What I’m trying to explain here is that the proposed rate for Egress traffic per TB is actually way lower than what it actually costs to operate. This is not yet a concern for individuals running storage nodes from home as long as ISPs don’t charge for bandwidth.
If you are an individual SNO or business SNO using consumer ISP services then you are most likely underpaying for these services considering the bandwidth requirements of Storj nodes. For these reasons, it seems to me that $10 per TB for egress usage is a bare minimum considering what it actually costs to move 1 TB of data today. Setting this rate lower would be completely out of touch with reality.
Wow, I did not know that. I think this could be a thing, where Storj can take advantage of its infrastructure based mostly on underpaid bandwidth at ISPs.
So if I understand it right, StorJ is paying for a lot of Synthetic data; I assume this is their own data for testing, which they don’t get paid for?
Id this is the case, reduce that, not what we get paid for storing data.
I rather have 1TB of well paying data, than 100TB that takes more administration and is barley profitable
Ok, it might not be worth it for 1TB, but the point is that I rather have less data that pays a fair price and is profitable, than a lot of data, where I need to administer multiple nodes and spend more time in monitor and tinker with (my time is not free either)
I tend to agree with this. I would much rather see the synthetic data deleted at an accelerated rate to remove the issue within a reasonable period and dealt with once and for all even if it meant reduced incomes for that period. So, say for example production customer data was incoming at 1PB a month as just a guess. I would not have an issue with synthetic data being deleted at 1.5 x the production customer incoming data level for a period of time. Though this doesn’t solve the long term issue for Storj to make a profit it would reduce the bleed rate.
They are reducing it as mentioned in the top post. Just gradually as to not cause shock and SNO exodus, which would be bad.
Here’s my question. How does this cost develop over time? Storj is small scale and can currently hide among the vast majority of consumer ISP connections without disrupting the pricing models in place. Consumer ISPs have always had customers that lose them money, they just make sure they make money on average. If Storj would keep their payouts stable at $5 per TB egress, by what time is that likely to become feasible in the network backbone markets? In short, is it possible for them to ride it out at that payout level?
Now it may be unfair to ask you that as it makes the operation you run likely lose money over the short term and that sucks. But it seems to me that it may be possible if Storj scales responsibly to be ahead of cost drops and stay afloat on overused consumer connections until this level of pay becomes more reasonable. Am I wrong?
At best they would be delaying and deferring the leaving since the income levels will reduce quite a lot at some point in the future.
Not necessarily as growth from customers can compensate for the loss. And at the least spreading the impact will ensure SNOs don’t all leave at the same time.
Not true if the nodes are full.
It is true for removing synthetic data as that would free up space for more profitable customer data.
It depends on a number of factors that are currently unknown. Just how much the cuts are and whether the data is downloaded more often by a significant margin. If it is mainly backups - as you admitted you use Storj for yourself - no egress payments. If SNO’s only earn around 40% of current levels and old nodes can’t expand above their previous size levels the data that replaces the synthetic data would have to be quite active to fully compensate.
Bandwidth cost has constantly been increasing since the dotcom bubble burst in early 2000s with modern internet infrastructures deployment. This has also been made worse as we are running out of ipv4 ranges. The battle for IPs has made prices go up as ISPs and datacenters now have to lease them instead of having them assigned (which only was a one-time fee in the past).
I would say that it depends on your location. Considering current average bandwidth cost, only European and North American based nodes would be able to turn a (slight) profit at $5/TB of egress (if big enough as small to mid size facilities rarely pay less than $10 per TB of bandwidth). But in reality ingress traffic also needs to be accounted for. As I mentioned in my original post, the current earnings calculation only really makes sense for individual SNOs with fixed internet rates. At $5, taking ingress bandwidth cost into account as well does not make anything sustainable. As a side note, Asian and Australian nodes are already largely unprofitable at $20 per TB egress (1 TB of bandwidth in Asia costs about $25, $35-$40 for Australia) thus the lack of nodes in the Asia-Pacific region on the network at the moment.
This is a very delicate topic as unfortunately, real bandwidth operation costs secrecy has kind of been made an industry standard over time. The only way to get real answers is either directly working within the industry or having insiders as you won’t find any good and up to date resources on this topic anywhere else.
My use is small and not representative. I used to pay until it got completely covered by the free tier. It’s inconsequential for the larger average. Which seems to be about 6% egress on static stored data. But synthetic data has had basically 0 egress for a while. This is not going to compensate for the payout drop, but it would compensate for a static storage drop if removed gradually over time. I see the payout drop as a separate issue. Only thing they can do is do it slow and carefully to ensure not too many nodes leave at the same time.
I appreciate you sharing your insights. I think this angle wasn’t sufficiently addressed in prior discussions. But it will eventually be an important part of remaining sustainable long term.