Storj is an open source platform allowing users to rent storage provided by other users. It is soon migrating from Bitcoin to Ethereum. Storj is three years old and has a working product backed by a big team already. The details on ICO and the upcoming token distribution are scarce, there are already a few competing players in the market, but the interest in the renewed Storj can nevertheless be high.
Storj is a distributed encrypted cloud storage network where users called farmers provide their spare hard drive space and bandwidth to other users, called renters. Launched in 2014, Storj has already developed a working product. This summer Storj will migrate from Bitcoin to Ethereum and they are holding their second ICO prior to that
Storj consider centralized cloud storage providers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform) as its main competitors. Opposed to them, Storj wants to provide more security through encryption while being fast and relatively inexpensive. Among blockchain-based alternatives, there are a few that could compete with Storj:
Sia is an established product that offers blockchain-based cloud storage, which is in general similar to Storj. However, Sia runs on its own blockchain instead of Ethereum, and is fully decentralized. Storj is usually considered faster and more user-friendly. Sia is cheaper (2$ on Sia against 15$ on Storj per monthly storage of 1TB; $1 versus 50$ per download bandwidth for 1TB), but has an entry barrier as one needs to put up collateral first to become a farmer.
MaidSafe serves as a distributed data management service and is therefore more than just object storage. MaidSafe relies on its own network instead of an existing blockchain, and is currently available in Alpha only. In terms of pricing, a comparison is difficult as the storage costs on MaidSafe depend on how much resource is available on the network and how much demand there is to store data.
It is also worth noting that the native protocol for Ethereum called Swarm is being developed. Also, the Filecoin project is announced to be built on top of Ethereum in a while by IPFS creator Huan Benet. So the market for decentralized storage is becoming hotter and more competitive.
Storj Labs, the legal entity behind Storj, is based in Atlanta, US. The team includes 16 people. Twelve of them are developers with active Github repositories. The four founders are Shawn Wilkinson, Tome Boshevski, James Prestwich and John Quinn. All of them are primarily associated with Storj which has developed into a network with nearly 20,000 farmers and 20,000+ API users in three years. Shawn Wilkinson, the creator of the codebase (check him out on Github), just stepped down as CEO to focus on its CTO functions. The CEO responsibilities are temporarily shared among other three co-founders.
The team is also supported by a large group of community leaders. Storj is advised by economist Warren Weber, a former Senior Research Officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and Anand Babu Periasamy, head of Minio cloud storage server. Argon Group advises Storj on the token sale; TokenMarket assists with the conversion of tokens; CoinFund is helping to find a fair solution to the large volume of tokens held by Storj Labs.
No exact figures are available; official figures are expected at the start of or during the ICO.The most detailed estimate is given by Smith+Crown based on the interview with the team and their own calculations, except the scheme does not reflect the planned reduction of the total supply. What we officially know so far:
“Storj has a great team of developers, and it was the first that created a token for the decentralized storage market, — underlines Konstantin Lomashuk, CEO of Satoshi Fund. -Its transition to the Ethereum protocol and distribution of the most part of the token supply are strategically right.“
For more details on the project, check their website, blog, or join their Telegram channel. For all useful links, check the project’s profile on Cyber•Fund.
Satoshi•Fund — blockchain investment company that invests only in blockchain assets since 2014.
The report is prepared by Satoshi•Fund.
You can read it on Medium.
