STORJ - Decentralized Cloud Storage on the Ethereum Network
What is Storj?
Storj began as a DAPP on the counterparty platform back in 2014 trading under the symbol STJCX.
Three years later and the the team successfully completed an ICO funding of $30 million to port the coin over to the Ethereum platform trading under STORJ, not an easy task by any standard and displays the development teams progressive and hard working ethos.
Storj is set to alter how the world does cloud storage with the Ethereum network as their leg up vs other cloud storage solutions such as Maidsafe,Filecoin and Siacoin with likely competition on the same network coming from Golem and iEx.ec who are targeting different demographics such as image rendering and financial calculations with Storj focusing on big data solutions and the average consumer.
How does Storj Work?
Utilizing blockchain functionality, a peer to peer network and client side encryption Storj:
- Eliminates the need for third party storage providers.
- Increases network security privacy and data control.
- Has no single point of failure.
- Enables a network of users "farmers" to provide storage and bandwidth through maintaining nodes.
- Users provide the data for encryption to the network which is broken up into equal parts called "shards".
- Shards are spread across nodes in the network with pointers to locations on Ethereum's merkle tree,stored on an off-chain server managed by Storj.
- To access data, a transaction is initiated that scans the merkle tree verifying the identity of both parties, de-encrypting and resembling data then providing to the owner.
- Storj's server is centralized but an attack would be pointless as without the private key, it is not possible to de-encrypt data.
Benefits over traditional cloud storage.
- Reduced overheads and maintenance since large data centers are not needed.
- Obsoletes hardware redundancy.
- Can mirror shards on existing nodes easily for quick access at little cost.
- Data contained on a centralized server is vulnerable to attack from the inside and the outside, the nature of distributing shards in parts across multiple makes it difficult to find the parts of the same file and as the network grows further bolsters the difficulty in anyone matching different shards would a node be compromised.
Why the change to Ethereum?
- Counterparty transaction confirmation time of 10 minutes vs Ethereum's 10 seconds provides ease of scaling.
- Storj's growth on Counterparty had seen profit margins drop significantly for farmers running nodes Ethereum's smart contract functionality mitigates cost.
- The estabilshed network of develpoers and users on ethereum will further increase Storj's possibilty of fast growth.
How big is Storj?
Storj has already has estabilshed a strong user base with 25k users being serviced by 18K farmers with a network capacity of 8 petabytes of storage with about 450 GB a node.
Market Summary
Research carried by marketsandmarkets.com has forecast a potential growth in global cloud storage of $51 billion up from $21.76 billion in 2016 and set to reach $74.94 Billion by 2021 having a Compound Annual Growth Rate(CAGR) of 25.8%.
The most growth will be seen in the Asia-Pacific and Russia with the already established markets in the U.S seeing little growth having being the top performer in global cloud storage in 2016 with the likes of Amazon, Dropbox and Google.
Mike Quindazzi of PWC Multinational Professional Services Network stated in a recent post on Twitter that 2018 is set to be a tipping point for global storage for all based on recent surveys.
This leaves a lot of room for growth in Storj with the current price of $1.06 a coin with a market cap of around $81 million.
Who is behind Storj?
A large team consisting of :
- 14 developers with transparent github accounts.
- 12 community leaders providing much information to the public and helping to promote.
- Multiple advisers including but not limited to Venture Capitlists Tyler Scriven and Michael Cohn.
- Ceo of Minio Ananad Babu Perisamy
- Former federal reserve economist Warren Weber
Storj Labs Board
- Tome Boshevski, Chief design officer
- Philip Hutchins, Chief technology officer
- John Quinn, Chief development officer
- Shawn Wilkinson, Chief strategy officer
- Currently Recruiting CEO and Industry Leader
Conclusion
A combination of global demand for cloud storage, the low operating costs, ease of scalability on Ethereum, the high level of security provided and a strong development team, expect Storj to establish itself as one of the top data storage providers in 2018 and in the near future.
Author: @bitcoinbutter
Thanks for the info! I'm buying some more STORJ!
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I had only heard of Storj but didn't know they were in the cloud storage biz as well as some of the other facts you shared. I especially appreciated the chart that anticipates the rollout of the particular technologies at given times in the future. That's always fun to consider. I may need to get some Storj :D
If you own a mining rig storj is a neat little bonus, just slap an old HDD (20ishW consumption) an create a node. Atm you got paid once a month. It's a great fire an forget crypto tool.
This article and the debate are really interesting. I am looking at the storage start ups as there is a huge void to fill in the coming decade. The storj template is in essence efficient but is it the model that will come out on top? Will the storage succeed if farmers are using old technology which is prone to failure?
Thanks for sharing this.
I have been looking into possibly mining. Its good to see they have been around for a while, I thought they were a new company.
After mining this coin for a few months, I have seen one major problem.
Payments are sent manually after community approval.
I think there is a fix coming out for that shortly... I hope. I haven't been paid on time, and if I had not gone to their chat to say that I haven't received any payment, I don't think I would have received any coins at all.
I understand this is all a work in progress, but, this is something I would like fixed before I try hosting for them again.
Hi @madhatt,
yes payment delays were an issue before but now they are implementing a micropayment channel using the Raiden network on Ethereum so will be real-time instead of monthly.
Is that working now? Or in progress?
Full details of crowdsale and future roadmap are still pending so i am unsure what the current payment system is.
I would think being on Ethereum it is handled with smart contracts instead of manully but i dont know for sure.
Good Post
How do you feel it compares to Siacoin? Aren't they basically doing the same thing?
Storj is 100x easier to setup then Siacoin or Burst is. Storjshare took 30 seconds to download, 30 seconds to install, and 30 seconds to setup. If you have a computer that you have on anyways I would highly recommend adding storjshare to it to get a little extra income off it while its on. It takes a while to build up its storage but once done it's smooth sailing from there.
Hi @budz82,
I am unfamiliar with the setup or much about the very technical side, it is quite extensive some complex formulas involved and beyond my previous experience.
You will have to let me know how you get on and how the farmer payment functions proper once you receive.
By "build up its storage" is this downloading a copy of the blockchain or just the shards of data you are storing and pointers to the merkle tree for the users you are supplying?
No for Storj you simply download storeshare, install it, it asks you to input a ERC20 compatible wallet for payment and then you simply create a folder on your computer and then through storjshare you pick that folder and tell the program how much space to allocate for people to use. Its that simple.
Wow didn't think it was so straightforward.
Looking at the Storj Share GUI explanation on their website was a bit daunting with suggestions to change configurations and router settings thought would be more difficult and I personally don't like to change from current setup for maximum security.
Do you have any idea how the payment will function and after how long you will receive your first?
I have not yet received my first payment so I am a bit limited on how much I can help with that part. That being said my current understanding is that at the start of each new month the previous months payments will be sent out automatically to the wallet you attach to your account, but again I haven't gone through that process yet so I am unable to confirm this part as of yet.
https://storj.io/share.html
HI @pandorasbox,
Both provide cloud storage but in different ways,
Sia uses blockchain for payments and coins are mined and uses its own platform.
Storj uses end to end encyption, cryptography and distributed storage on nodes using the Ethereum network.
Right, so basically they do the same thing but one has it's own blockchain and the other uses Ethereum.
If that's the only difference between them.. well, I wouldn't know how to pick the winner between them. I could see Siacoin possibly being able to offer a cheaper service because of specialization, but with the popularity of Ethereum.. who knows? I may get out of this market, with such uncertainty..
Siacoin will have difficulty scaling using there own platform is built from the ground up, current network size is 215 TB vs 8 PB in Storj with little restricitons on growth using Ethereum.
Yes Siacoin is more specilized and is targeted towards enterpise use rathar than consumers.
The security of the network in Storj i think is the best point.
With Siacoin the ease of development on platform with anyone able to contribute.
Yeah I guess there are subtle differences. And there is probably room for both, just like how there is room for more than 1 in the current cloud storage scene.
What bothers me is when crypto's choose terrible names. Siacoin is one of them, IMO. A name like Storj is not awesome, but a lot better and has a certain vibe that the internet community likes. I wish Siacoin would have chosen a better brand name. I think it matters a lot in today's world.
I am holding on to my tiny amount of Siacoin (only $50 or so) just for the fun of it. I expect good gains but nothing huuuuuge. Not like Ethereum, NEO, etc., it just doesn't have that potential. That's why I mainly stick my large investments into projects that do have that potential, and keep a small assortment of coins like SC mostly for fun. I noticed that at some point, collecting different kinds of crypto almost becomes like a hobby too! That's why I have 4000 Dogecoins too! Just have to have some Dogecoins! It is my donation, to give value to Doge, by hodling them and not selling!
I just wish the payment wasn't once a month though, any word on that changing?
Hi @nightshift1134,
There isnt a set charge per month using Storj only being charged when storage used.
I dont think there is a way for any company to provide a an average users amount of data storage with a one time fee.
Sorry i meant for renting/sharing your free space payments or at least an estimated payout
Yes Siacoin is better in this aspect using the mining model, pays as is used and has its own smart contract's which I believe storage deals can be made between stoarge providers and consumers.
There is a possible sceanrio with Storj, if all user were to leave network it would cease to function but that is no longer a problem due to the amount of users and storage providers combined at 43K and with the new user base on Ethereum is a very unlikely possibilty.
I'm currently testing siacoin as well for whatever storj doesn't use. I can't wait till maidsafe hits alpha 2
Maidsafe does look like a good product one problem is the fact they don't use blockchain, this could lead to a lower level of security vs blockchain storage but will remain to be seen and won’t really be fully known until is released at scale.
Is it so that you have to pay for each of your own files you download from the cloud?
Hi @protoken,
It costs $0.015 GB per month and $0.05 GB a download compared to traditonal cloud storage markets $0.023 GB per month on Amazon Web Services and $0.03 GB per month on Microsoft Azure.
That's some interesting figures. I'm currently using Dropbox, but maybe I should consider moving some of my contents to Storj.
Are you concerned about the technology itself, especially the risk of actually loosing the content you upload there? I mean, is something unforeseen happens to a relatively new technology, who knows which consequences one might face.
Could be useful depending on your needs,
Storj has been working with Filezilla the past 8 months on developing an integration for their FTP platform which would bring 15 million users into the fold.
This is currently in beta testing and is unknown when it will be completed
As for current storage 25gb is free for 12 months I think is plenty for general needs.
Currently it doesn't provide the function to allow others to access your files, if that's your need.
Yes failure is always a possibility is the same with data storage is much less with crypto data storage solutions.
Extra security is provided with a decentralized model and risk is mitigated with Storj though their distributed node storage as opposed to central data centers with a single point of failure, one falling to an attack or catastrophe all data could be lost.
Thanks for the information!. I'll definitely look into Storj.