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Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer

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Re: Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer

#91

Post by davidgerard »

thinbeige wrote: post #82

A blockchain is at the end of the day nothing else than a distributed database where everyone can run nodes. This is a hell of an effort and everyone who is using this 'feature' needs a very good reason and use case which justifies the costs. Every new ICO should answer the question if a distributed BFT database is required. If yes is the benefit big enough? If not then just forget it. Or invest and sell the first mi…

An ICO makes sense for crowdfunding in very limited conditions:

* if you have a technical problem that requires decentralised, cryptographically verified tokens (if it doesn’t need tokens, they shouldn’t be bolted on);

* if the tokens are directly usable on the platform itself;

* if at least a proof-of-concept of the technology verifiably exists;

* it also helps if the idea is even plausible as a business.

Unsurprisingly, most ICOs don’t meet these criteria.

The closest I've seen is Civic, which tried quite hard to meet the first three. However, for the fourth, it's still using a blockchain to solve a problem that only exists if you use a blockchain.

Re: Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer

#93

Post by davidgerard »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #59
nissehulth wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, Sia does look very promising. But plenty of work needs to be done before it is a real product. The first-use experience isn't good right now.

How many technically challenging products have been overnight successes? One thing that is really confounding about all the anti-blockchain rhetoric on HN is that people seem to expect these products to be finished instantaneously. Building great products takes years.

Blockchain has had eight years to come up with a use case that isn't a cryptocurrency. (And cryptocurrency has had eight years to come up with a use case that isn't illicit goods.) At this point, it's entirely reasonable to ask where the beef is.

Re: Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer

#94

Post by wpietri »

blunte wrote: post #8

Unfortunately for the author of this amazing (and cringeworthy) exercise, skeptics often put in a lot of effort, but receive practically no reward compared to the con artist. Even the people who agree with and appreciate the effort of the skeptics are few compared to the number of irrational people who gladly follow the cons. This is a bit radical (and probably outside the interest of HN), but if we somehow could rem…

I don't think true personal financial need drives much of this. Anybody smart enough to pull off a con like this could get an adequate job and make enough to live comfortably on.

I think the problem comes from people who won't stop there. Some are just sucking voids of desire; they always want more. Others want to be on top, to be number one. In my view, these people are broken.

So personally, I wonder about how we keep broken people in check, and how we rework society to produce fewer broken people.

There's a great bit in Iain Banks's Player of Games where the main character, who is from a post-scarcity utopia, visits a classic stellar empire, one clearly a stand-in for the worst parts of our current culture. The rich, imperial upper class types he's talking with have a hard time understanding the main character's lack of interest in owning. They ask, "Could you have a planet?" His take was roughly, "Well, I'm sure you could find an empty planet and land on it, but what would you do with it?"

It's something I think of often when I'm dealing with people trapped in a scarcity mentality.

Re: Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer

#95

Post by djhworld »

As far as I can see their idea is to incentivise people to "rent out" hard drive space to the Storj network, and get StorjTokens in return, although it's not quite clear from the website what you can do with these coins or what value they hold.

I think it's interesting, I guess protocols like BitTorrent don't work for personal files as you need seeders to be available at all times....I'm half inclined to think Storj might suffer from the same issue if every node that is storing replicas of your blocks goes away - or will the financial "incentive" be enough for people to keep their nodes alive.

What happens if the value of Storj just drops to the floor?

Re: Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer

#97

Post by blackrose »

jonathankoren wrote: post #84
thinkloop wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "scam" implies intent, it's very possible/likely that a lot of icos have good intentions, but are inherently complicated and hard to implement.

True. I also think that it becomes a scam when you give up, and keep the money that's left. Say what you will about Secret (anyone remember that app?), but they returned money when they stopped. ICO funded projects? Who knows? Maybe just buy lambos as the author said.

> ... but they returned money when they stopped.

After they took a couple mil for themselves :) [0]

[0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-founders-pocket-6-mill...

Re: Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer

#98

Post by andyroid »

tym0 wrote: post #96

People that chain commands without && makes me cringe, I had an Infra guy delete a prod website once like that...

No idea how command chaining could be involved in that (would love to know though!) but if somebody mistakenly takes down a production service from lack of command chaining, let's just say command chaining would probably be the least of my concerns.

Re: Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer

#99

Post by redm »

dsr_ wrote: post #63
redm wrote: post #29

A flip side of the (crypto)coin so to speak. I invested in Storj, and I also put some resources behind farming. First, there are lots of issues, but that's to be expected with an early product. At least there is a product. Second, this is a very different project than Dropbox, a centralized cloud storage originally built on AWS. Comparing the two is exactly fair, and the long term value proposition of Story is very d…

15TB is a lot for an individual, tiny for a business. What is your current estimate of time to breakeven?

I don't think there is a path to break even for storage alone, today. The real earnings seem to be in the transfer rates, but traffic is too low to ever consider it as anything other than an experiment. I heard Storj was going to prioritize farmers by latency and bandwidth; now that I've been reading about the turmoil, I'm not confident it will happen anytime soon.

My payout last month was ~$5 and I was in the top 30 by payout, if I remember correctly, but I had only received a couple of TB of data. This month has been much better, so maybe ~$100 but mostly because of data transfer. I've seen peak bandwidth of over 400Mbps in and out (800Mbps combined).

Interestingly, a number of the top earners have been trying to game the system by uploading a small amount of data until the shard ends up on their node and then doing the massive transfer to generate more Storj than the cost of the transit.

Re: Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer

#100

Post by proofofstake »

dsacco wrote: post #41
aaron-lebo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build great stuff and don't be greedy - set an example. Make those greedy over mediocrity look bad. Build for the sake of building, because that's reward enough.

Maybe that's enough of a reward for you, but personally I work because I like to get paid. The fact that I enjoy my work immensely is just a happy accident. There are things I enjoy doing even more than my work - much more so! - and if I did not need to get paid, I'd be doing those things instead.

Just wondering: If you got so rich from crypto currency that you could retire, would you retire? Start your own company? Just do fun stuff? Or keep working?

I myself work, to occupy myself with interesting problems, so I would keep doing this, regardless of my wealth.

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