Storj - setting up cryptocurrency mining and rate forecast

A new type of earnings has appeared in the world of the crypto industry - storj mining. Its essence lies in the fact that network users receive a reward for the free space provided on their computer.

The Storj project implements the idea of decentralized data storage, which is a safer alternative to centralized cloud storage. All information is placed in encrypted form and stored in a peer-to-peer (P2P) peer-to-peer overline network, in which there are no separate server nodes and separate client nodes, and each participant in the system performs these two functions simultaneously.

Basic information about the project

Storj is a cryptocurrency and a decentralized platform rolled into one, backed by a real and functioning product. With the help of this project, a distributed database is created for reliable storage of all types of user data, built on the basis of blockchain technology. The final product is aimed at the consumer (B2C).

The Storj project appeared in 2014 and, with the help of crowdfunding, raised almost half a million dollars for its development. The system uses tokens of the same name created on the Ethereum blockchain, which can be used to pay for the purchase or rental of storage on the network.

Benefits of tokens

Why did Sturge decide to use tokens instead of collecting money the usual way using Bitcoin or currencies? Here are some of the reasons the company went with its signature STORJ system:

Granularity: Bitcoin is not divisible or flexible enough to support the stability needed for micropayments, according to the company's official website.
Stability. By separating Storge from other cryptocurrencies, the company is building a layer of protection against the volatility of large markets.
Scalability: STORJ tokens help a company identify and fix problems at scale, which means a larger, more stable network in the long term.
Incenvisation: Community members receive level one technical support and development with Storge, meaning they are rewarded for their hard work.
Micropayments: Low transaction fees mean cheaper service for everyone.
Future Growth: Storge may use its tokens for further purposes in the future. The company explains that they “plan to use the token in ways that Bitcoin or Ether cannot.”
Healthy Ecosystem: One of the company's key features is that users can earn STORJ to share disk space or spend STORJ to rent disk space from others. This creates a positive feedback loop and a self-sustaining economy.

When to start mining Storj cryptocurrency

For the project to be successful, and for its users to be able to rent out their free space at maximum capacity, popularity and fame are needed, which will be brought by partnership agreements. And steps for this have already been taken:

In 2022, the Storj team successfully negotiated with the owners of FileZilla to provide a graphical interface for storing files on the Storj network. This will involve creating a libstorj (library) that will be integrated into the FileZilla application. This integration gives existing FileZilla users the ability to use Storj for a more secure, cost-effective and flexible storage solution compared to cloud providers such as Amazon. Storj will be available to 15 million users per month.

FileZilla, launched over a decade ago as a school computer science project, has since become one of the most popular open source FTP clients, available with more than 100 million downloads per year. Free and open source with cross-platform support - available for Windows, Mac and Linux users.

You can start mining Storj cryptocurrency right now: the project offers 25 GB of free storage space and bandwidth per month for new users who subscribe to the platform. Creating a Storj crypto wallet is not difficult: any ETH wallet will do for storing coins.

conclusions

Storj is not the first blockchain project that addresses the issue of decentralized data storage. Filecoin and Siacoin are already working on it (we wrote more about the latter). Competing with them, the company relies not only on the product, but also on alliances with other companies. The platform’s partners include Filezilla, the YouNow video platform, SONM and other projects.

Making money by renting hard drive space is a controversial decision. Theoretically, you can make money on it, but this money is not comparable to the profit of Bitcoin or Ether miners. Mining Storj is a good idea for people with a lot of free disk space and computers that work 24/7. And only if there are enough users. For the rest, the extraction will not bring any special dividends.

How does the mining process work?

Storj users who provide their space store small encrypted chunks of Storj users' files on it. This means that no one miner holds the entire file, and since the information is encrypted, it is unlikely that he could read it.

Storj Share's simple GUI allows you to specify:

how much hard drive storage you want to provide;
add STORJ wallet address for payments;
specify the Storj node to use.

When people upload files through Storj, your node connected to the network starts receiving chunks of the files and placing them on your disk, and you start getting rewarded for it.

To organize your own farm for Storj mining, you need to download a special miner application from the official website https://storj.io. Choose the latest version for your operating system:

Windows
Linux
Ubuntu
Mac

The installed version will change over time, so always download the latest firmware when it is announced. Once the download is complete, open the download folder and double-click the executable file. When the installation window appears, select “Add a firewall window” and then click “Install”, the program should now be installed.

To add your first drive to Storj Share, you need to go through three steps:

configure NTP synchronization;
configure the STORJ ERC20 address to receive payments;
make settings for the storage location and the amount of disk space you want to allocate for Storj Share.

Each of the configuration steps described below uses a different connection protocol, from the most unstable to the most stable connection:

Basic configuration	Advanced Configuration
UPnP	TCP Port Forwarding
Low - medium connection stability	High connection stability
No network setup required	Router port forwarding required
Almost no computer setup required	Computer configuration required

Mining Storj: answers to basic questions

Storj is a decentralized storage system that allows you to store your files securely and encrypted. No hacker attack can affect your files as they are stored on a decentralized p2p network. I suggest you check out this article if you want to learn more about how and why Storj works.

Storj is one of the altcoins that is backed by a real and functioning product. It's not news that traditional cloud storage services like Dropbox and Amazon are becoming obsolete. Centralized storage lacks security and privacy. That's why startups like Storj and Minebox are gaining popularity so quickly.

Storj is designed to be used by ordinary people like you and me. The whole idea of the coin is to allow ordinary people to rent out and profit from their unused hard drive space and internet bandwidth. However, it is also possible to make custom storage setups for Storj hard drives.

When to start mining Storj?

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 presented with the ability to upload and protect their files through Storj. This will allow Storj to be advertised to over 15 million people per month.

Recently, the Storj coin has been attracting more and more attention. I believe that Storj is moving forward steadily, so I invite you to create your own Storj farm.

How to mine Storj Coin?

Setting up a Storj farm is easy. In fact, this is one of the reasons why people usually prefer Storj because it does not require much skill to set up. Let's see how it's done:

I installed two 3TB hard drives on my rig, the first being a Western Digital Blue 3TB internal hard drive (WD30EZRZ) and the second being a Seagate Expansion Desktop Drive 3TB external drive with external USB 3.0.

Since my processor is dual core, I can only install two nodes, two hard drives.

> 1 Installing an internal Western Digital Blue 3TB hard drive

• Shut down your farm first. • Connect a hard drive with SATA connectors. • Start the farm.

In most cases, the hard drive may require formatting, so you will need to create a new NTFS partition

• In the search bar, type “disk partitions” and click on it. • After opening the Disk Management window, you will get a pop-up window to initialize the disk, select GPT (GUID Partition Table) and click OK. • After initializing the disk, the hard disk space is unallocated, right-click it and select New Volume, click Next, name your hard disk, wait for quick formatting and finish.

> 2 Installation of Seagate Expansion Desktop Drive 3TB

For external hard drives, installation is very simple.

• First of all, you need to connect the USB cable and power cable to the hard drive. • Connect the USB cable with the USB port to the motherboard and turn HDD ON. • Wait a couple of seconds for Windows to open it. • This is all.

>3 Connect HDDs to Storj and start renting HDD space

• Click the Add Disk button. • Enter your Ethereum wallet address (the wallet must support ERC-20 tokens, such as MyEtherWallet). • Select your hard drive partition and create a new folder inside, for example “Storj3TB”, 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.

> 4 Additional and mandatory settings

Step 1: Sync Clocks Step 2: Firewall Rules Step 3: Monitor Nodes

Storj Mining Profitability Calculator

Let's start with the fact that there is no exact way to calculate your income in Storj. Let's not forget that it is impossible to calculate the exact profitability of mining any cryptocoin. Sites like Cryptocompare offer calculators that can estimate your income, but expectations are rarely met.

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.

Storj mining profitability

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. Again, I expect this to change soon once Storj is fully integrated into Filezilla. Let's see.

Note. I noticed that external hard drives get more contracts than internal ones, still not sure why that is?! However, the difference is real and consistent, so I'm taking this into account for future drives in my farm.

How Nodes Work You don't need to increase your profits with Storj using a PC with a multi-core processor. Each processor is considered a node, so a dual-core processor will give you two nodes.

This was not possible until recently when developers added an option to manage allocated resources and thus run multiple nodes on a single PC, depending on the number of cores.

Conclusion

Storj is a project that is being developed by a team of professionals. Their goal is to provide people with access to decentralized file storage. I like the steps they are taking to achieve this goal. If the partnership with Filezilla works, then the demand problem will likely be solved.

How to calculate profits from mining Storge

Storj is not mining, there is no constant speed. The place is used by real people. Only the occupied space and downloads back to the tenant (client) are paid for. There is no computer program storj-calculator that would objectively calculate the profitability of your node. The price for miners is dynamic and depends on the entire population of participants:

used space: 2-6 $/TB/month;
paid bandwidth: $0.02-0.05/GB/month.

Therefore, an earnings calculator is impossible in principle.

1 GB is every hour you store one gigabyte and if you store 1 GB for one month, the calculation will be as follows:

GBh = 1 GB x 24 hours/day x average days/month = 730 GBh for 1 GB storage for an entire month.

Calculation of the expected profit from storj mining can be calculated based on the basic formula, according to which for each filled gigabyte of your space you will be paid 0.015 US dollars.

For each downloaded gigabyte of information stored on your resource, you can receive an additional payment of $0.05. That is, if you rent out 100 GB of your space and have not downloaded the information, you will receive 1.5 $/month, the profitability of 1 TB will be 15 dollars. On average, you can get about 3 - 4 dollars per TB of space used + loading back to the landlord.

Launching solo mining in stages

Official website sourceforge.net.
Plotting for all coins is carried out the same way; you can understand the principle using the example of Burst, the most profitable coin among those that are mined on hard.

First you need to install a wallet for Burst.

The official Windows wallet can be registered here – sourceforge.net/projects/burstwindowswallet/

Installation details are shown in the video.

After registration, you need to set a passphrase (this is the key to your account) and generate your public key.

For solo mining you need to install the latest version of the Java framework. It can be downloaded here java.com/ru/download/.

Next steps after downloading:

Unpack the archive into the root folder of your hard drive for mining.
For a 64-bit version of Windows, when storing programs on drive C, it is advisable to replace the word java in the contents of the batch files with C:\Windows\SysWOW64\java. This is not a required item.
Run the run.bat file.
Log in to your Burst Wallet account.
Save your secret phrase to the passphrases.txt file, run the run_dump_address.bat file. It will generate an account number.
Open address.txt and paste this number there.

Then open the document run_generate.bat, insert the following values in it:

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\java -Xmx*[amount of RAM for JAVA]*m -cp pocminer.jar;lib/*;lib/akka/*;lib/jetty/* pocminer.POCMiner generate [account number from the address file .txt] [first plot] [last plot] [plot size] [number of processor cores for generating plots].

It is not advisable to edit the plot size and the amount of RAM for the Java virtual machine.

An example of an edited batch file.

In the example, the processor is 2-core, 200 GB.

Next, do not close the wallet and do the following:

Example.

Run run_generate.bat. The disk began to break into rafts.
Run run_mine.bat.

Run.

If notifications about errors in reading a file appear, do not worry.
The run_generate.bat window must be closed after all plots have been generated.

You can learn how to create plots more quickly, and what to do if the electricity suddenly turns off during generation, from this interesting video.

Two more good videos with step-by-step explanations and solutions to possible problems will help you avoid mistakes.

Mining pitfalls, things to consider

Mining on a home computer, which is not specifically designed for round-the-clock work on complex and energy-intensive calculations, involves some features that novice miners sometimes forget about.

They are due to the fact that the conditions under which mining is carried out require good ventilation, high-quality and reliable power supply, which often do not correspond to the parameters included in conventional computers, namely:

Home computers, located even in the best ventilated and spacious cases, cannot provide the same level of cooling as mining rigs, assembled in special cases for mining with high-performance forced cooling, or assembled on frame structures with good ventilation;
Power supplies installed in ordinary computers, as a rule, do not have the necessary power reserve, which is required for round-the-clock work on carrying out calculations for mining cryptocurrencies, and therefore can fail faster;
Even the largest computer cases will not allow you to install multiple video cards in them. The most advanced gaming cases allow you to use two video cards at the same time, but using them for mining around the clock guarantees overheating of the components in the computer, operation of all coolers at maximum speed, and rapid failure of the computer. In new games, the equipment carries loads quite comparable to the process of mining cryptocurrencies, but does not work 24/7.?

A mining farm at home may well generate income from mining cryptocurrencies if it has equipment produced in recent years. When using your home computer for mining around the clock, be sure to remove the side cover from its case for better cooling. Don't try to squeeze maximum performance out of it by overclocking. This will not bring much benefit, but will significantly increase the possibility of its failure.

If you recently purchased an Nvidia RTX 3000 series GPU, then your computer can be compared to a budget mining rig. One RTX 3070 develops 100 Mh/s on ether, and if you did not skimp on the power supply, then by removing the case cover, or even better, by placing the gpu in the riser, you can mine cryptocurrency. Not everyone is ready to pay that amount for a video card and then run it around the clock. However, the activity is quite profitable and the money will be recouped in about a year. Well, if you realize that mining is not your thing, you can use the card for gaming or sell it.

How much can you earn

Most people are confused by the low profits from mining with a hard drive. Indeed, even with a rough calculation, a farm from an HDD with a total volume of 50TB will give an approximate income of 1875 coins per year (at the exchange rate as of December 23, 2022 - 841 USD).

If you invest the same amount in a farm with 2 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video cards, the profit will be more than $2,000.

The prospect of mining immediately ceases to please, but in practice it is worth taking into account the additional costs of maintaining a farm on video cards, namely, electricity costs vary by almost 15 times.

You can calculate the payment amount yourself, based on the following annual indicator:

5 HDDs of 10 TB – 297.84 kW;
2 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti – 4380 kW.

The need to regularly update equipment deserves special attention. When working with hard drives, this should be done only when the devices fail or when it becomes possible to buy inexpensive, larger components.

In all other situations, no modifications are needed. Video cards need to be updated with each new upgrade, because competitors fight for hashrate even within the same pool.

In addition, an additional cooling system, a more powerful processor and a higher-power UPS require maintenance.

As a result, you can earn cryptocurrencies with almost equal success on two types of farms, although hard ones provide slightly less net profit.

The relevance of mining on a laptop and other devices

Laptops, even those with high-performance processors, graphics cards and large hard drives, are not very good for mining. This is due to the fact that their cooling systems and power circuits are not designed for 24/7 operation in the critical mode that is typically used in mining calculations. The laptop will not be able to work with high performance for a long time and will simply burn out.

You can run mining on a laptop for a short time if you want to study the process itself and set up mining programs, but you should not use mobile devices for round-the-clock mining.