I would like to open discussion about Storj coin, why it was chosen or made, why not use etherium directly or some other independent coin not token. It makes aditional charges to conver transfor, and cant pay this price in storj token, need etherium. Any coin will be very stable, because of storj use will stibilize it. Something like Bulwark coin, it not have mining any more, only staking, 51% mining atack is not posible. Have high transver speed, at least 3 exchanges. It is just example. Also it could be some payment deteils for what node, upload, TB*h is minimum. There is a minimum count of storj tokent to transfer it to etherium, a least on Myetherwallet. As there is a minimum to cenvert and ether is droping in price i loose money all the time, when i received last month paimant it was worth 14$ now it is below 12
Thanks @vadim! I will open that discussion for you right now, hang tight! 
It would be wonderfool if Storj people give some information about topic.
hi @vadim ā Im pinging someone who knows more about this particular decision. I have a bunch of info about how the token is used, but youre asking about why the token is used
As i just writen in other post,
it is realy not comfortable to use tokens.
I do know that one advantage of using tokens is that entities can pay people across the world, in a way that would not be feasible otherwiseā¦ and also in very precise amounts or even micropayments. Iād also say that STORJ was intended as a utility token, and its a different thing than a crypto/mining situation.
So although we do utilize blockchain technology as a payment mechanism, we arenāt trying to be Bitcoin or Ethereum. Weāre using blockchain as a means to an endā¦ but our product is our storage layer platform, and thatās really our focus.
I didnt mind that not using crypto at all, but there is hundreds of crypto to use and whith what you can pay for transfer and other with its crypto itself. There are more faster and chiper ways to use cryptos, but tokens on base of other coins and if you want do something you have to have this base coins. there is also minimum swap amount what is 254,2 Storj to change to etherium. And if it would be posible to change and charges will be held from exchanged amount, then it would be somehow acceptable way. But it work in totaly wrong way.
Hi Vadim,
Hereās my unofficial answer (others may have more to add). Ethereum blockchain tech enables the network to programmatically pay a massive network across the globe. At our peak capacity with V2, the network was paying over 150k storage node operator IDs each month (in over 180 countries and territories). This would be ultimately very difficult to do over ACH rails in a way that is programatic.
We are big proponents of decentralized blockchain technology, and view it as a critical rail to achieve the master plan for the network (ie - where everything is automated and humans are eliminated, ala https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53855.msg642768#msg642768 to https://storj.io/storjv3.pdf)
We try to remain agnostic, and not overly maximalistic for the underlying rail that is used to achieve our vision. Today, due to ethereumās developer ecosystem, open-source tooling, and detailed roadmap, we view it as the best tech to help drive the vision forward.
Their are noted limitations, however. At the peak of our payment processing, our transactions accounted for about 8% of all Ethereum transactions, and gas prices got high. We have actively been building POCs around micropayment concepts like Raiden (https://storj.io/blog/2018/12/taking-payments-to-the-next-level-with-raiden/) and plasma sidechain solutions like Matic to explore ways to reduce (or eliminate) gas fees for node operators while still rooting security for payments in the blockchain itself.
Ultimately we will likely evolve with the rest of the blockchain ecosystem in the direction of usability, performance, privacy, and economics ā without being overly quick to commit to an L2 solution.
We are also actively exploring the proposed ETH2.0 spec, which interestingly, includes technologies that are central to Storj for blockchain sharding (mainly erasure coding: https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/A-note-on-data-availability-and-erasure-coding)
Ultimately, Iād say the goal is to continue to build an experience that is great for node operators, and enables the network to function at a global scale!
Thank you for reply, why not use node processing power to process payments, you have big node infrastructure, they can process lot of operations, at same time can utilize processor power, like in my node there is i5, than almost do nothing.
Iām no crypto expert, but Iām sure youāre doing something wrong. You can send STORJ to an exchange which accepts it for a few cents. There you can convert your STORJ to USD. Binance for instance charges 7.67 STORJ per transaction. Thatās nowhere near ā¬10.
this is the dedend, i have wallet on myether walet, to transfer storj i need ether, and i not have ether, to buy it with real money it is about 10 eur. Because of fees, from credid card.
not sure what you are doing but especially with the surge payouts Iām making a lot more money than electricity.
Hardware deterioration? The hardware should be running anyway.
And nobody can just ācreateā higher utilization on tardigrade network, that will depend on the users and developersā¦
Then you chose the wrong wallet? I use Atomic wallet and I could exchange STORJ for anything I like directly inside the wallet.
Hey @kevink, did you actually try this? Because Iām using Atomic Wallet too, and it says that the STORJ pair is inactive. I will have to use Binance on my side to convert STORJ to Bitcoins, and then yet another platform to get Euros out ot Bitcoins.
Never tried the whole process yet though, so Iām not sure how much Iād lose on the way.
I only have 10ā¬ worth of STORJ at the moment so Iām not even sure itās possible to withdraw so little from an exchange. Maybe Iāll give it a go in the following weeks though, just to see how it works.
oh yes the pair is temporary unavailableā¦ I remember that it used to work although I never explicitly tried it. But since it says ātemporaryā I hope itāll be available again soon.
with the surge payouts Iām making a lot more money than electricity.
True, if itās just electricity, but if we calculate hardware deterioriation as well, the number doesnāt looks good unless the utilization & fill rate improve, by a lot.
Hardware deterioration? The hardware should be running anyway.
Perhaps, for some SNOs who already have a 24/7 running hardware with spare disk space. But definitely not all. If we want to talk about real growth and sustainability for storj network, I donāt think it is wise to limit SNOs participation only to this specific scenario.
And nobody can just ācreateā higher utilization on tardigrade network, that will depend on the users and developersā¦
All business depends on customers willingness to purchase and use the product, but we can certainly do something to motivate and encourage them.
I apologize in advance if this reply sounds harsh or offensive to any party (which I assure you, is NOT and never my intention). Against storj recommendation, I am pouring money for dedicated storage node hardwares. I want storj to succeed, as I have stake as SNO and potentially, a decent sized tardigrade customer.
You may find this knowledge base article useful. Note that some coin swapping sites do not require you to make an account or KYC, so at least it would make the first step of the conversion a bit easier.
Doesnāt it allow Storjlabs to essentially pay SNOs using āprintedā money? That way they didnāt have to pay lots of money to get people to run storage nodes in the alpha and beta phases. In addition, they get real money from clients, and pay using the printed money to SNOs, making great profits. Only when their STORJ token reserves run out will they spend actual money (to buy more STORJ tokens). However, I have no idea how much STORJ they own so take this post with a medium sized bag of salt.
Aside from that I canāt think of a good reason to use cryptocurrencies for this since they are very inefficient compared to centralized currency (if you look at the amount of energy required per transaction). This is the case with 99% of fully decentralized solutions, so it makes sense that Storj is actually not really a decentralized solution: the data is decentralized, but without the satellites there is no network.
If you want more info about the token reserves Storjlabs has, they report on it every quarter. Most of the reserves are in lock up to protect the market against the possibility of a lot of STORJ being dumped on the market at once.
Why just not pay directly in Ether? then you just no need nothing in addition