Storj - A Decentralized Dropbox - And, Of Course, Its ICO
I've been playing with Storj for a while now and I have a neutral to favorable opinion about it. For those of you unaware, Storj is one of the cryptocurrencies mined "with your storage space". Apart from Storj, another actors in this field are Siacoin and Burstcoin (an NXT mashup). I briefly played with both but in the end I chose Storj for an extended trial.
As usual, here the most important points:
Storj server software is written in Node.js, which makes it suitable for small computing units. As a matter of fact, it looks like raspberry pis with attached external storage units combos are quite common in the Storj ecosystem. There are GUI versions for all major OSes, like Windows, Linux and MacOS, I've tested the Mac OS version and the Linux server on a raspberry pi.
you mine with a combination of the storage space you can afford to offer and the bandwidth.
coins are distributed once per month now, after all calculations are done. If your occupancy is less than 1GB you don't get paid. During my first 20 days I didn't get over 600MB, so I have zero coins so far. But according to the Storj website, you pay $0.015/GB/month, so as a provider you should get less than that.
In about a month, a 850GB storage unit got 3GB in occupancy, which is less than 0.3%.
there will be an ICO in less than two weeks (called "tokensale" on the official website), in which the value of the coin is set up at $0.5 (here you can find more details)
All in all, I find the idea very interesting and lucrative, as I think there is a significant amount of unused storage space in the world, which is rapidly increasing along with the dropping price per GB (or TB). The success of such a venture, which aims to create a decentralized Dropbox, lies in execution. So far, the Storj ecosystem seems very active and the community is solid.
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Had Storj on my to-do-list to check out! Thanks to your post, I know already more :) Thanks!
Sounds like a very interesting concept indeed. Wondering if I should use my PC for this, or if I can install this on my NAS (have QNAP). NAS is better since always on. PC is not always on an eats quite a bit of energy.
Should be always on, as one of the metrics is how reachable your storage is. I would go for a Raspberry PI (I tested it on a PI 3, but I'd go even at the extreme of trying on a Pi Zero) which then controls a NAS via USB. In my setup I have a small PI with a 1TB hdd connected via USB, nothing fancy.
How is redundancy of storage arranged; in the protocol of the blockchain and sofware rules around it, or does your hw have to provide eg disk redundancy?
It's at the software level, you don't need to have RAID or anything (unless you really want to, of course)
Cool, setup should then be very simple and straight fwd. Super! I'll start looking for Rasp Pi to purchase.
Files are stored in multiple nodes, after being sliced so anyone can get the full file.
You get paid by the amount of disk space you are really ocupying. If the PC is shutdown and it remains in this state for some time, then some files -contracts- could be removed by the software.
You are only paid by the amount of time files are stored on your disk and by the bandwidth provided. If user uploads the file once you will be paid less than if the user uploads once but downloads many times.
That is in contrast with Sia, where you must provide some collateral and you loose it if file is unable to be accessed for a time. There is no penalty in Storj.
Notice that I am not advocating for Storj and I will likely migrate to Sia during this summer.
Why are you migrating to Sia? Storj is moving from Counterwallet to Ethereum which should improve their backend.
Good points @javirid. Also SIA is on my list to check out. At this point in time I cannot say what I like more. Uploading files but by people to store them in the cloud but never though them seems not so interesting from commercial point of view with Storj. I have to look into the commercials with SIA though. I also have to do some calculations on cost versus income on both Storj and SIA. What about Filecoin? Also on my list to check out.
On the guide on their (Storj) website they explain how to share the files. There is also an API so programmers could work on it. I am pretty sure that it is possible to, for example, create a website fully hosted on the Storj nodes. That will increase payments for farmers (people who run nodes).
Anything to say about Filecoin. Just Know that it appeared earlier than Sia and Storj.
On the Sia side, there is already a business working. Storj provides 25 GB for free the first 12 months. I really think Sia will surpass Storj. They also have a much much much better interface.
Sia is managed with only an app. Both for uploading files and managing the hosting of other users who are renting yours. Storj provides a command-line interface for the final user and a command-line interface for the farmer (hosting).
Sia asks the user to download the blockchain (which is not the bitcoin one) while Storj doesn't need it as it is not blockchain based.
In Sia everything happens with Siacoin, while Storj final users pay in fiat that then is converted to SJCX -which is a Conterparty asset- in order to pay farmers. This summer farmers will be paied in a new ERC20 token, STORJ.
There will also be MaidSafe (an Omni asset) which wants to provide a real way of sharing files and accessing them. And PIVX, I think.
Just to start, Storj is fine. It doesnt asks for the collateral :)
Would SIA also run with a Rasp Pi and some storage connected? I have several WD MyBooks siting around doing nothing, they have 2 disks per MyBook and can configure them in RAID, or I can have two MyBooks run in RAID, when Rasp Pi support RAID configuration like that (probably not, but not familiar with Rasp Pi other than I know they exist).
I don't know :/ :\ :/ Sorry.
I tried it and never got paid anything. Not worth the trouble
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Madesafe also offers a decentralized system for both secure storage and running secure applications. They supposedly reward users with "Safecoins" as an incentive to users for providing storage space, CPU, bandwidth, and online time.