Ninety thousand farming nodes scattered across 200 countries, with 69,000 users conducting 240 million transactions each month. Those are the statistics for Storj, a decentralized data storage company that’s been around since 2014. In order to help manage its widely dispersed and active network, Storj has called upon a veteran of open-source software, Ben Golub, to be the company’s executive chairman and interim CEO.
Golub was previously the CEO of Docker, an open platform that allows developers to build, run and ship distributed applications. In an interview with CoinDesk, Storj founder Shawn Wilkinson expressed confidence that Golub’s background in open-source companies will be the catalyst that helps drive the company forward.
As Storj approaches the next step in its rollout, a new release of the core architecture, Wilkinson knew it was time to call upon a seasoned professional to help keep the momentum going, according to the news outlet. Storj has received a tremendous amount of interest from users and developers, due to its high amount of flexibility and software containerization.
Storj’s network topped 20 petabytes in total storage in December of last year. This increase was four times greater than what was held just two months prior. Simply put, that amount is equal to a little more than 13 years of high-definition video. Essentially, Storj users “rent” their unused hard drive space to other users in exchange for small cryptocurrency payments.
Storj bills itself as the “next generation of decentralized object storage,” and utilizes end-to-end encryption to control unwanted access. Storj charges $0.015 per gigabyte (GB) per month, and $0.05 per downloaded GB.
Not only does Storj offer online storage, it has rolled out its own cryptocurrency as well. The coin, aptly called STORK, is worth around $1.13 and has a market capitalization of about $150 million, according to CoinMarketCap data. Storj isn’t releasing all of its tokens, however, opting to hold 245 million for six months. The move follows a cancelled release from December 2017, and is designed to provide better transparency regarding the company’s development timeline, as well as to implement design changes meant to provide better stability to the coin’s price. The value of the coins being withheld is approximately $300 million, although there has been no word when they might be released.
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