Cryptocurrency STORJ - Detailed review and prospects

Storj cryptocurrency (STORJ) is a token of the decentralized platform of the same name, designed for storing data in encrypted form.

The name Storj translates to "storage". In fact, the developers have proposed a decentralized cloud storage solution. The open-source Storj cryptocurrency is a secure file storage service that successfully combines the capabilities of blockchain technology, end-to-end encryption and all the benefits of the cloud.

Storj is a platform in which each participant can become both a tenant and a lessor of disk space. Information is placed between participants of the entire network and is encrypted in such a way that the key is available only to its owner.

Features of the STORJ platform

The main difference from classic cloud platforms is the absence of a centralized server, which is replaced by nodes. Any Storj user can provide the service with a portion of the memory on their hard drive and become the owner of the node. In essence, each such user becomes a farmer and receives the STORJ cryptocurrency for this assistance to the project. This coin is the main one on the site and serves for mutual settlements between users who provide space for decentralized storage and platform participants who use this volume to place their files on it.

The Storj network works similarly to torrents. This means that each file stored on the network is divided into several small parts (shards) that are distributed across the network for storage. But unlike torrents, in the Storj network, each such fragment of the file is encrypted. Encrypted shards have a standard size of 8 or 30 MB. Sharding is performed to improve security, privacy, data availability, and overall performance of the network itself. Therefore, clients must encrypt the file before the sharding and uploading processes to protect data.

Storj uses blockchain to store information about shard locations according to Kademlia's distributed table. The owner of the file can find the shards and retrieve their data from the network using the private key.

Company representatives are confident that such a system allows you to increase the speed of interaction with the cloud service up to ten times, and the rate of money savings for tenants reaches 50%. These indicators make it possible to leave cloud servers due to their outdated concept.

The main feature of the platform is its decentralized nature. It is this feature that has the most positive impact on the security of all data stored by tenants on farmers’ resources. All information that is loaded into the system is located not on one, but on several servers at once. It is located on many farm computers, which means that it is essentially scattered all over the globe.

Even if some hacker manages to gain access to part of the information, it will not be possible to decrypt it without the remaining files, which will be in completely different places. Only its immediate owner can use the information that has been loaded into the system.

Farmers should remember that the platform only pays for the amount of allocated GB that is actually used, not for the amount that is provided. Even if you provide 6 TB of storage, you will be paid for the amount of storage that was actually used by other people within the system.

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 Network Security

The Storj network, like most other cryptocurrencies, also depends on a certain number of nodes, which are provided by “farmers” - the same users who share the available space to store encrypted shards. In effect, this ensures that no single farmer has access to the entire file. If a farmer tries to access any encrypted shard stored on his disk, it is identified as a malicious node and removed from the network.

It also employs a parity-erasure encoding scheme to protect against hardware failure or other causes that could result in the loss of data stored on an offline node. When splitting a file into chunks, users can manually set parity schemes on some chunks, which essentially sets the level of redundancy on those chunks. This is done using the Reed-Solomon code erasure algorithm. In the case of a missing parity shard, the erasure encoding algorithm can recreate the entire file from the remaining shards. However, at least 50% of the total number of shards is required to restore the file.

To verify the existence and integrity of all shards stored by farmers, the Storj cryptocurrency provides proof of retrievability by performing hourly file audits. The network issues a challenge to farmers, which can only be answered if the shards are still intact on their hard drives. Farmers then answer the call and receive payment. This way, data owners can be confident in the integrity of their data online.

Thanks to the use of innovative technologies and methods, this storage option is cheaper and transactions performed on this blockchain are much faster than on traditional cloud storage platforms. And most importantly, the speed does not compromise the security and integrity of the data.

And finally, it is worth mentioning that all information within the Storj network is securely encrypted and distributed among computers connected to it located around the world, and decryption of the stored data is available only to its owners.

History of creation and team of the STORJ project

The Storj project was founded in December 2014. Even then, a team of professionals came together with a single goal, which was to create the largest and most secure platform for a revolutionary open-source decentralized cloud storage.

Initially, the electronic currency within the project was the SJCX token, which was based on the Bitcoin blockchain. Starting in 2022, this approach began to show its inconsistency and inefficiency, as a result of which the decision was made to switch to Ethereum technologies. It was then that today's STORJ coin appeared. Despite the fact that the platform has provided the opportunity for free conversion, the old coin is still in circulation and exists in parallel with the new one. On some sites you can still find offers to buy or sell SJCX.

The transition to a new technology and a new coin allowed not only to reduce the commission fees charged to the site community (which significantly increased its popularity), but also increased the capabilities of some functional aspects of the site, along with the ease of use.

The Storj project has a fairly large team. Storj Labs is co-founded by Shawn Wilkinson and John Quinn. Other key figures include Ben Golub, executive chairman, and Philip Hutchins, chief technology officer and chief network architect.

In total, the team initially included about 45 specialists with various professional skills, ranging from Bitcoin (BTC) mining to startup management. Today the team already has 63 employees. Among them:

• Founders: Sean Filkinson and John Quinn.
• Technical Director – Philip Hutchins.
• Chief Financial Officer - Matthew May.
• Chief Data Scientist - Patrick Gerbes.
• Lead developer: Brydon Fuller.
• PR Director – Dan Sorensen.
• Client Director - John Gleeson.
• Analyst - Garrett Ransom.
• Vice President of Marketing - Jon Sanderson.

All specialists have extensive experience both in the IT field and in the field of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Most of the team has been part of it since the initial planning stage and is still working on the idea of ​​​​providing ordinary people with the most accessible and convenient opportunity to rent out unused hard drive space and make a profit from this type of activity.

Benefits of the STORJ Network

When considering the merits of the Storj cryptocurrency, first of all, it should be taken into account that traditional peer-to-peer networks, while offering users a high level of encryption and confidentiality, are not suitable for use in production storage systems. As a result, the Storj cryptocurrency offers a new functional model that takes into account performance issues while implementing a set of federated nodes that provide transparency and usability to the system.

An important advantage of Storj is its low cost maintenance. For example, in real time, the most famous cloud storage service company, Dropbox, charges $99 for an annual rental of 100 GB of disk space. In contrast, in the case of the Storj project , users can rent a virtual private server and manage 100 GB of MetaMask themselves for just $1.96.

Other advantages of Storj include:

• Support for the development of various dApps, since the platform is based on open source code.
• Providing cloud storage services that do not depend on a single localized server.
• An opportunity for users to earn a profit in network tokens in exchange for their provision of their cloud space and bandwidth.
• Accessibility for both experienced and novice users.

But the issue that remains is that Storj allows users to manually set redundancy levels on shards, which can be challenging for people with less technical knowledge.

Mining cryptocurrency STORJ

The process of setting up a STORJ mining rig is easy. Coins do not require high performance from the equipment. Two HDD drives of 2-3 TB each are enough.

The ease of implementation of a mining farm for the production of this crypto-asset contributes to even greater interest from users. The main thing to know is that you can provide the site with exactly the same number of hard drives with memory for cloud storage as the number of cores your processor has.

Connecting hard drives is as follows:

• Click the "Add Disk" button.
• Enter your Ethereum wallet address (the wallet must support ERC-20 tokens).
• Select your hard drive partition and create a new folder inside, for example “Storj-Mining”, select the folder.
• Select how much space you want to rent and click Next.
• In Connection Settings, select Random and click Next.
• That's it, repeat these steps with each new HDD you add.

If you've been following Storj, you probably know that some people complain that it takes weeks to rent out over 100GB of hard drive space. This is, of course, due to the lack of demand caused by the lack of popularity of the service.

The Storj team knows this and they are taking steps to address this issue. In fact, one of the biggest breakthroughs is that they recently partnered with FileZilla. Filezilla is a popular FTP client that was born in 2001.

Thanks to the partnership, people who use Filezilla will soon be able to upload and protect their files through Storj. This will allow Storj to be advertised to over 15 million people per month.

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:

Exchange	A country	Registration
USA	Go
	USA	Go
USA	Go

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Profitability of mining STORJ

Let's take a look at the profit you can expect from renting your HDD space on Storj.

The basic income formula is $0.015 per gigabyte. You get an additional $0.05 per GB downloaded. This means that if you rent 100 GB, you will receive $1.50 per month if the data owner has not downloaded their data.

This means that to earn a monthly income of at least $90, you will have to rent out 6 TB of hard drive space.

There are also energy costs. According to calculations, the PC consumes about 75 Watts, given that its hard drive is spinning. If you use your computer for two hours a day, you'll have to pay Storj for the remaining 22 hours. In this scenario, costs would average $5.94 per month with an electricity bill of $0.12 $kWh.

This means that giving up less than 400 GB of disk space is not beneficial as you use your computer for an average of two hours per day and let it run Storj for the remaining 22 hours per day. Now, if for some reason your computer is already running 24 hours a day, then allocating some of your hard drive space to Storj will result in net income.

Although the mentioned formula seems quite simple and fair, it is important to remember that you are paid for each GB actually occupied, and not for the number of GBs you have made available for rent. This means that you can assign 6TB to Storj, but you will only be paid the amount that people actually use, which may only be around 100GB in the first month.

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 2022, when the currency was trading at a price of $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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STORJ cryptocurrency rate

At the time of writing, the STORJ cryptocurrency is ranked 111th in the CoinMarketCap ranking. The market capitalization is $112 million and the daily trading volume is $93.6 million.

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You can store the STORJ cryptocurrency on any wallet that supports the ERC-20 Ethereum standard. This could be MetaMask, MyEthereWallet, the Trustee Wallet multi-currency wallet, or Ledger or Trezor hardware wallets.

Storj Storage Wallets

Most large wallets that support the ERC-20 standard are suitable for storing the STORJ coin.

However, there is also an official list of recommended wallets that the project team advises to use. These include:

• MyEtherWallet;
• Parity;
• imToken;
• MetaMask;
• Mist;
• hardware wallets for cold storage: Trezor / Ledger Nano S.

MyEtherWallet will automatically recognize the STORJ token. If for some reason this does not happen, it is recommended to perform the following steps to add a coin to your wallet:

1. Go to the "Send Ether and Tokens" page.
2. In the "Token Balances" section, select the "Add Custom Token" option.
3. Enter the STORJ contract address in the Address field.
4. Enter "STORJ" in the "Token Symbol" field.
5. Enter "8" in the "Decimals" field.

Parity automatically recognizes the STORJ token under the acronym STJ.

imToken automatically recognizes STORJ tokens.

A short guide to managing STORJ markers in MetaMask can be found here.

Mist:

1. Click on the "Contracts" button.
2. Scroll down the page and click "Watch Token".
3. Enter the STORJ token contract address in the “Token Contract Address” field.
4. Enter "Storj Token" in the "Token Name" field.
5. Enter "STORJ" in the "Token Symbol" field.
6. Enter "8" in the "Decimal Places of Smallest Units" field.

There is also a wallet called Jaxx that has big plans to support Storj, but at the time of writing these plans are still pending.