Storj – storage of information in a decentralized cloud (STORJ)

Nadezhda Zakharova 02/09/2018

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Storj is a digital currency and cloud storage platform.

The platform has a decentralized operating algorithm.

All data that is on the network is encrypted and the decryption process is available only to developers.

Project history

The platform was created in 2014. Thanks to the ICO, about $500 thousand was raised.

At that time, this was a fairly large amount for projects of this type.

Initially, the network used Storjcoin X tokens.

They were subsequently replaced by Storj cryptocoins . Users could convert old tokens into new ones. As of today, the exchange process has been completed.

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Do you remember torrents?

Understanding how torrents work helps to understand the concept of Storj. Torrents became known as a way to download movies, music and TV shows in the early 2000s, usually illegally and for free.

Torrents use a peer-to-peer (p2p) network, which is structured as follows:

- many users store copies of the same file.

- when someone needs a copy of this file, a request is sent to the network.

- Users who have the file, known as seeds, send fragments of the file to the requester.

The applicant receives many fragments from many different seeds, and the torrent program compiles these fragments to form a source file.

The advantage of using a torrent is that you can download pieces of a file from multiple sources in parallel. This means that file transfers can potentially be faster than downloading the entire object from a single source.

In addition, torrents are decentralized, a property that distributors of pirated music and videos use. Nobody controls the torrent. Thus, it is difficult to block the download process because you will have to close each individual seed.

Storj works in a similar way.

Company capitalization and digital currency value

Against the backdrop of a general decline in the cryptocurrency market, the value of this crypto fund also decreased.

The historical maximum was recorded in January 2020, when the currency was trading at $3.2 per crypto coin.

Today, the price of one token is $0.98. The company's total capitalization is just under $131 million.

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Choosing a HDD for mining

Before you start mining on your hard drive, you need to decide on the equipment. If you need to buy a device, then the main criterion that you should focus on when choosing is the cost of 1 GB of space, that is, the ratio of the cost of equipment and the amount of memory. The lower the cost of each gigabyte, the faster the investment will pay off.

The second aspect that needs to be taken into account is the reliability of the equipment, although it is generally accepted that modern HDDs are at the same level in quality. For some products, the manufacturer provides a longer warranty period (up to 60 months), while for others, the technical specifications indicate an estimated service life that is higher than that of analogues. Purchasing HDDs on the secondary market is not profitable due to their wear and tear and short service life.

Table 1. HDD characteristics and prices

Figure 8. HDD 1 Tb

For mining, Sia and Storj use only HDDs, because the speed of information processing does not affect profitability; in their case, the bandwidth of the Internet channel is more important. And to mine Burst, you can try using an SSD.

Blockchain

There are quite a lot of similar projects today. However, unlike them, Storj has its own token system.

This was done in order to provide application support and speed up the development of this project.

As already noted, previously the tokens were called StorjcoinX (SJCX) and were based on the Bitcoin blockchain. At the same time, the developers realized that it would be much more efficient to use mutual settlements based on Ethereum. As a result, new tokens were released on the ETH blockchain.

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Storj

Storj (STORJ) is a protocol that creates a distributed network for forming and executing storage contracts between peers. The Storj protocol allows peers on the network to negotiate contracts, move data, verify the integrity and availability of remote data, retrieve data, and pay other peers. Each peer is an autonomous agent, capable of performing these actions without significant human interaction. Storj has its own token.

Rate as of 08/14/2020

• Rate:
  0.286733 USD
• Symbol:
  STORJ
• Rating (CMC):
  148

How do peer-to-peer networks work?

A peer-to-peer cloud storage network that implements client-side encryption will provide users with the ability to move and share data without having to rely on third-party storage providers. Removing centralized control will reduce traditional data inefficiencies and failures, while also significantly improving data security, privacy, and control.

Peer-to-peer networks are generally impractical for production storage systems because data availability is a function of popularity rather than utility. Storj offers a solution in the form of a question-and-answer verification system combined with direct payments. The system can periodically check the integrity of the data and offer rewards to peers serving the data.

A decentralized network for cloud storage has many advantages over data center-based cloud storage. Data security can be maintained using client-side encryption and data integrity can be maintained through proof of retrieval. The impact of infrastructure failures and security breaches will be reduced to a large extent. An open market for data storage will be able to reduce the costs of different storage devices, allowing more parties to compete using existing devices. Data on the network will be resistant to censorship, modification, unauthorized access, and data failure. This document describes a specific implementation of such a network, as well as a set of tools for interacting with this network.

Payments in the Storj protocol

Storj is payment neutral. The protocol does not require any specific payment system. The current implementation offers Storjcoin, but many other types of payments can be implemented, including transfer of BTC, Ether, ACH.

The reference implementation will use Storjcoin micropayment channels, which are currently under development. Micropayment channels make it possible to pair payment directly with an audit, thereby minimizing the amount of trust required between landlords and data owners. However, because data storage is inexpensive, audit fees are negligible, often less than $0.000001 per audit.

Storjcoin allows for much more granular payments than other candidate currencies, thus minimizing trust between parties. In addition, the mechanism of micropayment channels requires that the total value of the channel be deposited throughout the life of the channel. This lowers the currency's velocity and implies that value fluctuations greatly impact the economic incentives of micropayment channels.

Using a single token creates a certain amount of insulation on the outside of volatility, and Storjcoin's volume supply minimizes the impact of token escrow on the market.

New payment strategies should include currency, storage price, retrieval price, and payment purpose. It is highly recommended that new payment strategies consider how data owners prove payment and landlords verify the receipt without human interaction.

Quasar

Storj implements a peer-to-peer publish/subscribe system called Quasar. Quasar offers topical publish/subscribe using Bloom filters. The topics describe the ranges of contract parameters needed by the broadcast node, including contract size and bandwidth assignment. The list of topics is standardized at the protocol level and is easily expandable. This facilitates the process of entering and agreeing on a contract, ensuring the delivery of messages to interested nodes.

Access to the Storj network

As is obvious, the data owner must bear the burden of maintaining the availability and integrity of the data on the Storj network. Since nodes cannot be trusted and hidden information such as a set of tasks cannot be securely transferred to a third-party untrusted peer, data owners are responsible for negotiating contracts, pre-processing data segments, issuing and validating audits, securing payments, maintaining file status through collecting segments data, processing file encryption keys, etc. Many of these features require high performance and significant infrastructure, especially for active filesets. User-run applications, such as a file synchronization application, cannot be expected to effectively manage files on the network.

To facilitate network access from as wide a range of client applications as possible, Storj implements a thin client model that delegates trust to a dedicated server that manages data ownership. This is similar to the SPV wallet concept in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency ecosystems.

The responsibility of the data owner can be divided between the client and server in various ways. By varying the amount of trust delegated, the server can also provide a wide variety of other services. This kind of dedicated server, called Bridge, was developed and released as free software. Any individual or organization can run their own Bridge Server to contribute to the success of the network.

Creating a cryptocurrency wallet

Creating Storj crypto wallet is not difficult. You can use any ETH wallet for storage.

Opening a wallet is possible on a cryptocurrency exchange.

Today, this digital asset is supported on most common platforms:

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