The problem with SIA was that they did not finish the strategy. And kept staying ONLY in the crypto world, which basically started milking the entire system and generated too much confusion. Only the big ones kept the thing consistent.
I have since lost my node because it was under a NAS that I never bothered to recover. The data is there, but because its already so long, my collateral is gone.
This "collateral" was another thing that Storj did very well, actually essential, and SIA already had (and that was part of the reason SIA worked for some time). But Storj made it more simple (for now) and did not bothered to complicate the product just yet to support that out of the box within the code, like SIA had.
In some sense they now have a balanced system with the "HOLDING" and might also generate some revenue from holded funds, which from the enterprise perspective for cash flow is very important.
Just in 2 days, already did 200GB of traffic... so, definitely more customers!
This is great information! I'll definitely be following your adventures - it's gotta be the ultimate dream to live off of passive income from blockchain storage!