Hi everyone, Storj newbie here.
How do the intended applications for Storj differ compared to that of Datacoin (DTC)? DTC was the original coin for data storage and while innovative, it is also pretty much dead right now in terms of market cap. Say, for example, I have a draft of a short novel that I'm writing which takes up 1 megabyte of space. In order to permanently back this up into the DTC blockchain, this would cost me 50 DTC or about 50 cents.
What price range should I expect for Storj and will it be permanent too?
Secondly, how does Storj intend to keep the blockchain size small enough for practical use? The Datacoin blockchain is designed to grow at a rate of 500 GB per year which limits the coin's usability and lowers the number of nodes which can take part in the network and thus, lowers network security. Will Storj also feature a bloated blockchain or will there be measures to prevent this?
EDIT: Well there wasn't much information in the OP or the official site but a quick read of the whitepaper suggests that data won't actually be stored in the blockchain but rather on other people's hard drives. How will I know that my data will stay backed up unless every node in the network has a copy of it - i.e. a blockchain? Doesn't this mean that a few computers in the network can be switched off, break down, or their owner(s) might decide to reformat their hard drives and my novel can disappear forever while the network - oblivious to all of this, continues chugging along?
Storj is a Counterparty asset, it doesn't use Datacoin blockchain. Florincoin is the current boostrap.
You can read Storj FAQ, welcome to Storj official forum.
https://storjtalk.org/index.php?topic=2197.0Why is Storj not just running directly on the Bitcoin blockchain and why use the Counterparty platform?Transaction fees and strict metadata limits make the Bitcoin blockchain impractical for large scale metadata storage. As described in the MetaDisk whitepaper, we will use Florincoin as an initial solution. Eventually, we will transition to a system with more direct and scalable access to the Bitcoin blockchain via proof-of-existence. As blockchain technology improves we can use systems like Factom to provide faster throughput, and Ethereum to create enforceable contracts on data storage.