Who pays whom in 'decentralized' networks
Search “run a node” on the web and all you’ll find is “passive income!” guides. Nobody does the maths the other way round, from the chair of the person paying the electricity bill. I run four of these networks. Here are the real figures, as of September 2026 — not promises, what actually lands.
| Network | What the operator gets | Paid in | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monero (node) | 0 | — | The node isn’t paid. By design. |
| Golem (compute) | a few € / month | GLM (~$0.11) | Often below the cost of the electricity |
| Storj (storage) | a few € / month | STORJ (~$0.03) | Token at all-time low, company bankrupt (Chapter 11), operators last in the creditor line |
| Arweave (storage) | ~€1.5–2.3 / month per 4 TB | AR (~$2.60) | Declining (annual halving); barely covers the disk’s electricity |
Look at the “paid in” column. Never in euros. Always in a token — that is, in a bet. You’re not paid an income; you’re handed a ticket whose price is set elsewhere, by speculation, and which you fund in electricity.
There’s a logic to it, and it’s cruel. Infrastructure labour is never paid, because it’s abundant: anyone can run a node, so in their grammar it’s worth “nothing.” Scarcity gets fattened: the token, its supply throttled, stashed with those who sat at the table before you. Value doesn’t flow to those who produce the service. It flows to those who hold the ticket.
Monero is, paradoxically, the most honest case: it doesn’t pretend. The miner is paid (perpetual emission), the node operator is not, and no one claims otherwise. I put this asymmetry to the Monero Research Lab (issue #162): it’s a deliberate design choice, not an accident.
Storj is the most revealing case. It’s the only one that really tries to pay: it bills real customers in real money and pays operators. And it’s the one that just filed for bankruptcy. Chapter 11. In the restructuring letter, pages to reassure token holders, nothing for the operators who actually store the bytes. Paying real work for real storage turned out to be harder to sustain than selling a tokenised dream.
The honest objection: speculation is the bootstrapping subsidy — without it, no network can pay before it has customers. Partly true. But then stop calling it “operator rewards.” It isn’t a wage. It’s a lottery ticket we’re asked to fund, watt after watt.
And here’s the most troubling part: building this table is hard. Because the projects don’t publish the split — how much goes to operators, how much to foundations, funds, insiders. That opacity is no accident: it protects those who collect. That’s why the first demand of the Operators’ Charter is transparency.
I’m not saying stop running nodes. I do it, and I’ll keep doing it. I’m saying stop calling it income, and look at who gets what, squarely. From my chair, the answer fits on one line: the ones doing the work are not the ones getting the money.