Over the last few months, we’ve published a significant amount of information about the launch of the Storj V3 network. We’re all thrilled with the progress we’ve made, and the feedback from the storage node operator waitlist members joining the V3 network has been very positive. We’re now starting to get questions about the plan for the transition from the previous V2 network to the V3 network—for both storage node operators and developers.

This post is the first in a series of updates outlining the transition (and its timing) from the previous network to the new V3 network. The V3 network is an evolutionary leap in performance, scalability and ease-of-use when compared to other decentralized cloud storage networks, including the V2 network. One important thing to keep in mind is that the transition from V2 to V3 is not an in-place upgrade. It is a migration. To achieve our goals for an exabyte-scale distributed and decentralized cloud storage platform, we made the conscious decision to rebuild the Storj network from the ground up.

While conventional wisdom would generally caution against rebuilding, the data and experience gained from operating the V2 network, along with the fundamental architecture changes we needed to implement, ultimately made it the right decision. So what does that mean for the storage nodes currently participating in the V2 network and the developers who have been building on it? Let’s take each of those separately.

Transition for V2 Farmers to V3 Storage Node Operators

With the Explorer release, the public alpha for storage node operators, we’re beginning to build the supply, or storage capacity, for the V3 network. We’re starting to get questions from the V2 storage node operators (farmers) as to whether (and when) they should stop operating the V2 Storj Share app in favor of running their new V3 storage nodes.

As we continue the march toward the production release of the V3 network, it’s very important for V2 storage node operators to continue to provide reliable storage and bandwidth on the previous network. Our goal is to fully launch the V3 network while we continue to operate the previous network and maintain the two networks concurrently as we transition users from V2 to V3. Once we declare production availability of the V3 network with availability and durability equal to (and ultimately superior to) the previous V2 network, we will complete the transition of users to the new V3 platform. At that point, we will announce the schedule for sunsetting the V2 network.

Until the V3 network is ready for production use and all V2 apps are transitioned, we must continue to support the applications built on V2. To accomplish that objective, we will need a stable supply of storage space and bandwidth. We hope that all of our long-time, successful V2 network Storj Share farmers will transition to providing storage on the V3 network, but for now we still need you to operate your V2 farmer nodes.

In order to make that transition a smooth one, Storj will continue its testing and support of the V2 network and compensation of Storj Share farmers until the transition is complete, ensuring the network remains stable and financially viable during the transition.

Migrating Developers’ Applications From the V2 to V3 Network

As progress continues on the V3 network at a breakneck pace, we’re getting ready to outline the transition process for migrating applications from the previous platform to the V3 network. We will support both networks concurrently and do everything we can to provide a smooth transition. As we get closer to the launch of the Vanguard release, the public alpha that will welcome developers to the V3 network and allow them to begin storing data, we’ll communicate more about the specifics for the transition.

In the meantime, we are equally committed to the success of the customers who were early adopters of distributed and decentralized storage and have been our advocates and champions from the start. While we’re already actively engaged with a number of projects that are planning their transition to the V3 network, we welcome any projects that have been working with the V2 network (and want to know more about the transition planning) to reach out to us at partnerships@storj.io.

We do our best to communicate the state of development and progress on the V3 network as transparently as possible, but one thing we hope doesn’t get lost in the volume of information coming out lately is the amazing progress we’ve made and how quickly the development pace is increasing. I’m personally incredibly excited about the next series of releases and getting the V3 platform into the hands of storage node operators, partners and developers. We have a ton of great things in the works, so stay tuned to the blog and keep an eye on GitHub!