No, it is not.
They can tell customers to run the gateway themselves, but aside from that it is not possible to build a compatibility layer without a centralized gateway or the client running specialized software.
And I’m sure lots of clients wants an S3-comptible solution to just plug and play (I’m not having any insight about Storj clients, but most corporate clients are that way).
i have a question… currently storj is compensating synthetic load… if we were to reduce that to 0 this very minute… can the current payout model be sustainable to storj labs and profitable to storj nodes?
Negative.
There are currently 3 problems:
The proposal sounds like all 3 points should get addressed. They are all more or less equaly expensive / loss for the company. My personal expecation is that they all 3 need to get addressed otherwise this doesn’t work out.
I do not think anybody is getting into “being rude” territory. We are discussing our points of view with smiles on our faces. However, I would like to underline once again:
it seems to look that the promotion for the free accounts was not successful (Storj Inc. is admitting it is planning to adjust its actions on this),
it seems that the main Storj Inc. customer target are developers but it seems that there is a lack of development tools and the product seems to be inadequately communicated to them (this could be the reason the promotion was not successful),
it seems that the communication with the broader public is lacking, as there were voices from Storji Inc. expressed on this forum (i.e. the recent article at Tech Crunch is going to be corrected - it just sounds very worrying as it was about the strategy),
it seems to be rather hard to believe that the initial message about upcoming changes titled “SNO’s please don’t buy anything” was written by a person without any knowledge about proposed changes (I admit, this is on a verge, however, somehow I am really not buying it).
It looks like we might be lucky that Storj Inc. is having the CEO with such a broad experience. Some recent Storj’s Inc. moves like partnerships with Rclone and TrueNas are just simply brilliant. However, the outcome seems not to be as bright as expected. I believe there are many variables that you can tune when running such a network as this one and it takes significant amount of time to understand all the variables in depth. I am here for a time that is inadequate to understand them all. However, again, I do have a feeling that some analogies that I provided in the beginning of my first message on this forum could be justified. Please take a look at this from a financial industry perspective. I will make it short: i) there is a carrot which grows the network ($1.50, $20, $10), ii) there is an investment made on the underling assets provided by the network members (our HDDs, CPUs, Network Bandwidth, Charges and Taxes, and our Time), iii) the investment turns out not so good for the assets holders ($1.50 => $0.75, $20 => $1.50, $10 => $1.50). Is this polite?
Such growth is really nothing short of being spectacular. However, what is going to happen with Return on our Investment? SNOs helped to grow the network and SNOs helped to grow the business. However, the network is open to anybody, the returns are going down and the service we provide seems to become a commodity. My understanding is that the perfect competition economic model definitely is not in favor of SNOs. Instead of examples like Airbnb and Uber where participants collect rewards that allow them to improve their premises and upgrade their vehicles, we are drifting into a Bitcoin and Chia territory with ever increasing race among the participants and diminishing returns. Even worse, because for Bitcoin and Chia there seems to be some incentive to upgrade hardware to a higher standard but here the incentive seems to be to go not for the second hand hardware but after the proposed changes rather for the third and fourth hand.
Thank you. My point was not to criticize “Storj being very open to community feedback”. However, I really doubt that Stroji Inc. CEO reads all those lengthy threads. In addition, there seems to be no summary being written after they finish (at least by us, the SNOs). I would like to sustain my position that some Formal / Informal Union of The Storage Nodes Operators would be useful for us - the SNOs and for the Board of Management of Storj Inc.
Sorry I don’t get what you are trying to say. My opinion is that all 3 needs to be addressed. There is no way to continue paying 20$ if we just remove free tier and test data. That would still not work.
We knew this had to be addressed due to current market conditions, there is no surprise and we can adapt.
that will still need to be addressed of course…it wouldn’t work in the longer term… but reducing the burn helps storj labs be able to sustain longer… the test data is a net negative $20… whereas actual production data is a net negative $13… by reducing the burn, we can technically stretch alot longer… especially if there are alot of test data on the network now…
we can then go with a middle ground payment for now and not affect the payout to nodes… say if we were to drop it to $15 instead of $5… its not so bad?.. you are going with a net negative $8 now… and over time it can be tapered accordingly, or priced higher to customers…
if test data is not purged… and payout is dropped to $5… storj is still losing money due to test data presence on the network… since it will end up net negative if the prod:test data is 1:1 ratio (net negative $3)… and nodes don’t get any better payment so to speak
John is the COO and I know he reads these threads. You can also join the Twitter spaces to talk to him and others from the leadership team directly. Furthermore, there is a great community team that very frequently send messages from the community on to people inside the company who can actually make changes. I wouldn’t be too skeptical about being heard. You have the COO here specifically asking for feedback on this proposal. I’ll try to make sure I’m at the next twitter space again, but I hope to hear some other voices there too. Over the past few months, these subjects have been discussed there and I asked John directly about some of these changes on more than one occasion. Not many people ask questions there, but the opportunity exists to do it.
That calculation only works if the testdata gets downloaded at the same rate as the customer data gets downloaded. That is not the case. → Customer data with high download traffic are a bigger loss for the company.
That is exactly what the proposal has in mind. Just that it doesn’t end at 15$. There will be multiple steps down to what ever the final target will be.
Noob question: For what test data is required in a production environment? 
Wouldn’t it be better to eliminate that type of cost and recalculate your initial “offer” to the community? 
I’m seeing a lot of people suggest different numbers for payouts, most of them ending up with Storj still losing money.
For context:
Storj gets $4 per TB for storage. Due to the expansion factor (lets assume on average that’s 2.5x) that leaves them with $1.60 per TB of data stored on nodes. They also have to pay for repair processes with this amount.
Storj gets $7 per TB of egress, no expansion factor applies to this as customers pay for all egress used directly. They also need to cover the cost of edge services with this.
And I didn’t even mention the partner program, partners who bring customers on board also receive a cut.
Suggesting payouts higher than $1.60 and $7 is just meaningless as it is not profitable and scale will only make that worse. If you’re going to make these suggestions, please also suggest how they could pay for those higher payout numbers. Otherwise we’re just dreaming out loud… and in that case I’d like $100/$500/$500 please!
It is much more useful to calculate what your setup costs to run, what your payout would be and show why the suggested numbers would or would not work for you. Let them figure out how to pay you more if this isn’t enough.
It was initially required to incentivize node operators when there was little customer data on the network. It was also used for load testing and to reserve space in case large customers needed to be onboarded. So multiple reasons, most of which don’t seem to be needed anymore. At least not to the extend dat test data currently exists.
Tadda, here it is:
Feel free to copy and edit, folks.
I completely agree with this. I think the entire idea of bandwidth costs should be removed from the whole Storj system (even the product)
I have written many times on this forum about Storj target customers should be small business/professional individual but people keep telling me Storj needs to be on the same scale with AWS. Haha.
Exactly the model that most “sharing economy” start-ups have utilized. Example: Lyft/Uber
they simply don’t read. Lol.
I’m still consist with my opinion that Storj target customers should be developers, especially web dev for small business/individual professional. These guys are the ones who will make end-user products. I’ve waited for a Wordpress plugin or Laravel package for months, but still nothing…
About pricing model, in my opition we should have the following plans.
Free plan that anyone can join should a more strict conditions to join. At least a valid phone number for verification. You are wasting the network resources here. Make it 50GB storage and 250GB bandwidth. Why the hell the bandwidth is equal to disk space? Normally for a storage service, the bandwidth should x2 or x3 the disk space. And it should be a trial with expiring date. We don’t waste resources for people who always want free meals!
A sponsored pack for startups, for individual bloggers, key influencers in IT services, developers… You even need to pay these guys for a product review. Go sponsor those tech youtubers!
For business users: higher disk space cost + lower bandwidth cost. $4/mo is dirty cheap. $5.5-$6 is a good starting point. Your tech is awesome. You guys DON’T NEED TO BE CHEAP. Create more plans to choose. And the first 1TB bw should be free.
and if you want to cut costs from SNO paying then:
Higher pay for storage like $2.5/TB. This will make SNO stay, because at least they can pay for electricity bill.
Lower egress pay: make it $15/TB first, then $10TB…then $5TB. If what you guys telling is true which mean the traffic will increase by time, then the payment should also reduce time by time. Not a sudden drop.
That’s all. I know nobody will read this. Anyway. Good luck guys!
I would also tag nodes with a calification (class A nodes, B,C)… And make people pay more if they want the best nodes of the network. This is a win-win.
You mean “classification”. Lol. But I think we wasting our time here. Because they won’t read it. And if they read it it’s too complex to implement. They will choose the easiest way for them: to cut SNOs pay.
Maybe Storj made a mistake offering the service for such a low price and including the edge services, which negate the cost-saving “decentralization” aspect of bandwidth.
