Сloud storage is an important innovation, but it has a number of disadvantages in its traditional centralised form, including data vulnerability, lack of privacy and high prices. Storj is one such project that's trying to bring the benefits of blockchain technology to the cloud storage industry. In this article, we'll examine the project, its native token STORJ and price predictions for the token.

What is Storj (STORJ)?

Storj (pronounced "storage") is a decentralised open-source cloud storage system that allows users to store their files securely in encrypted form. Data is stored on disk space provided by Storage Node Operators, who are rewarded for this with Storj tokens.

Most data out there is centralised, and by decentralising it, I wanted to provide a similar service that was faster, cheaper and more secure — without forcing the users to change their habits too much. — Shawn Wilkinson, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Storj.

The history of Storj

Storj was founded in 2014 by American software developer Shawn Wilkinson and American economist and blockchain enthusiast John Quinn. In December 2014, they published the project's first whitepaper. Other key figures in the project are Ben Golub and Philip Hutchins. In total, the team initially consisted of more than 40 professionals.

Storj began as a Bitcoin fork, using the Storjcoin X token (SJCX), which was crowdfunded in July 2014. At the time, 910 Bitcoins (BTCs) were raised, amounting to what was then $500,000.

In May 2015, Storj Labs Inc. was founded on top of the platform. Then, in March 2017, the network migrated to the Ethereum blockchain, while the company issued STORJ tokens replacing the previous SJCX token.

The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States.

Storj's features

The idea behind the Storj project is to allow people to rent out unused free hard drive space. All it takes is a reliable and stable Internet connection. However, it's also possible to make specialised farms of hard drives to store data on the Storj network.

It's worth noting that Storj is an open-source project, and anyone can take a look at their code.

Each file stored on the Storj network is divided into 80 small pieces (shards), which are distributed on the network for storage. However, only 29 fragments are enough to restore the file. An individual node receives only a random fragment of the whole file. Each such file fragment is encrypted with AES-256-GCM symmetric encryption. Sharding is done to improve security, privacy, data availability and overall performance of the network itself.

When the file owner needs to retrieve their data, they can use their private key to find the shard and download it from the network.

To ensure that the nodes continue to store file fragments, Storj performs a file check every hour. The network sends a request to the nodes, and if they have changed or deleted the encrypted fragment, they will fail the check and will not be rewarded for storing the data. If they successfully pass the verification, they are rewarded in STORJ tokens.

The Storj network currently consists of more than 13,500 nodes located in 84 countries.

STORJ tokens are used to pay for data storage on the network. Initially, 500 million tokens were issued, but after the token sale, 75 million of them were burned.

Storj (STORJ) price analysis

As of 14 October 2022, the STORJ token ranked 140th among cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation at $160,839,553.

STORJ price statistics (as of 14/10/22)

STORJ's price history

STORJ was first listed on Coinbase in July 2017, priced at $0.52. The price started declining almost immediately after listing. Nevertheless, it rose sharply as early as the next month and reached a local high of $2.52 on 12 August 2017.

The second surge came at the end of the same year, taking the price to the level of $3.13. The crypto winter that began in 2018 has not passed STORJ by. From July 2018 onwards, it was below its starting point. The memorable March 2020 market crash brought the price to its all-time low. But after that, the token price began to recover along with the rest of the crypto market and shot up to its all-time high in March 2021. This was followed by a deep correction that lasted until early July. After that, the bullish trend prevailed again, which, however, failed to get the price to repeat the all-time high.

In early 2022, the trend changed to bearish and has remained so until now.

Storj technical analysis

Sorj, like most other cryptocurrencies, is currently in the grip of a strong crypto winter. The cloud storage token has lost about 90% of its accumulated value since the attempt to recover its all-time high back in November of 2021. It recently rejected the $1.00 mark and moved downward, flashing lower towards the local support at around $0.348, which some would consider a weak floor seeing as bears have tested the zone multiple times. A break below that region may see the value of STORJ reach as low as $0.249 before any real bounce can occur.

Storj (STORJ) price prediction 2022

As with most other altcoins, STORJ's price behaviour is largely dependent on the general state of the crypto market. If the situation is favourable, the bullish trend that started to form will continue, and the price may well exceed $2.00. If there's a general bearish trend in the crypto market, the price is more likely to continue falling.

Storj (STORJ) coin price prediction for 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2030

Although Storj currently has a market cap much lower than the leaders of the crypto market, it's still an established and well-known cryptocurrency. Therefore, many popular forecasting services don't overlook it.

Trading Beasts' STORJ price prediction for 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2030

Trading Beasts predicts the STORJ token will rise to around $0.60 before the end of the year and maintain that price as an upper limit for most of 2023 until 2025.

Wallet Investor's STORJ price prediction for 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2030

Wallet Investor doesn't predict the same good fortune for STORJ as TradingBeast does. Wallet Investor believes the token's price will fall by over 60% within the next year, making 2023 a notably lousy year for STORJ investment. It doesn't get better in consequent years, but one can hope that with the resurrection of the crypto market from its current winter season, prices may begin to surge again.

DigitalCoinPrice's STORJ price prediction for 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2030

DigitalCoinPrice also expects the price of STORJ to rise. According to their models, the average price of the token will be $0.51 at the end of 2022 and $0.76 at the end of 2023. This will be followed by a price increase to $0.98 in December 2024, and the price will reach $1.18 at the end of 2025, $1.14 at the end of 2027 and $2.40 at the end of 2030.

PickACrypto's STORJ price prediction for 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2030

PickACrypto avoids giving precise predictions but is also optimistic about STORJ's prospects and thinks that in 2023-2025 the price of the coin will visit the $10-$70 range.

Gov Capital's STORJ price prediction for 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2030

Gov Capital also predicts significant growth in the price of the token in the coming years. They believe the price will rise to $1.38 in a year and to $6.27 in 5 years.

Price Prediction's STORJ price prediction for 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2030

Price Prediction is also very optimistic about the investment attractiveness of the STORJ token. According to their price prediction, the average trading price of the token will be $0.79 in 2023, $1.77 in 2025 and $11.57 in 2030.

CryptoPredictions'STORJ price prediction for 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2030

CryptoPredictions' forecast echoes that of Trading Beasts and DigitalCoinPrice in that the token price will rise in the near term, followed by a decline before rising again. They believe the token price will be $1.430 at the end of 2022, $1.295 at the end of 2023 and $1.828 at the end of 2025.

Storj (STORJ) overall future value predictions

Given the ever-increasing amount of data produced by mankind, the problem of storing it is quite obvious. Therefore, the market for cloud storage is huge and will only grow in the future. However, decentralised storage platforms have some important advantages over their centralised competitors.

A promising niche, an experienced team and many partnerships suggest that the Storj project is quite encouraging. However, it should not be forgotten that the platform has not only large centralised competitors with huge resources but also many rapidly developing decentralised ones. In addition, some crypto experts accuse the project of having a significant portion of its tokens controlled by the founders, and thus the founders are able to manipulate the price of tokens.

How high can Storj go?

If the situation in the crypto market is favourable, reaching or even exceeding $2.50 is a realistic scenario for the STORJ token price.

Storj (STORJ) price prediction today

If there is no significant change in the crypto market situation, the current bearish trend is most likely to continue.