Dropbox Sunsets Unlimited Storage Plan, Partly Blames Crypto Mining

Dropbox, a broadly used cloud storage supplier with over 18 million paying customers globally, has introduced the top of limitless storage.

Detailing the rationale behind the change, the corporate stated the choice is available in response to rising misuse of the providing, the place clients have been leveraging its Superior subscriptions for functions unrelated to enterprise use, corresponding to crypto. Dropbox took particular intention at Chia (XCN), private storage pooling, and even storage reselling.

“We’ve noticed that clients like these steadily devour hundreds of occasions extra storage than our real enterprise clients, which dangers creating an unreliable expertise for all of our clients,” Dropbox stated. “Importantly, our coverage for Superior has all the time been to supply as a lot storage as wanted to run a reliable enterprise or group, to not present limitless storage for any use case.”

Developed by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen and backed by big-name backers, together with Andreessen Horowitz and Galaxy Digital, Chia is a cryptocurrency designed as an environmentally pleasant various to conventional cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

It makes use of a consensus algorithm referred to as “Proof of Area and Time” that depends on contributors allocating their pc cupboard space fairly than computational energy, aiming to scale back the vitality consumption related to cryptocurrency mining.

Chia representatives didn’t instantly reply to Decrypt’s request for remark.

Dropbox introduces new plans

Dropbox’s new providing now entails a brand new storage allocation construction for purchasers buying the Dropbox Superior plan with three energetic licenses, beginning with a 15 terabyte (TB) shared cupboard space, which the corporate equates to roughly 100 million paperwork, 4 million images, or 7500 hours of HD video. Every further energetic license will present 5 TB of storage.

For almost all of Superior clients utilizing lower than 35 TB of storage per license (over 99% of customers), the prevailing storage quantity will stay unchanged, supplemented by an extra 5 TB pooled storage credit score for 5 years at no further cost.

These utilizing 35 TB or extra per license can retain their present storage allotment, as much as a most of 1,000 TB, with out further charges, stated Dropbox.

The transition to the brand new storage coverage is deliberate for November 1, and Dropbox commits to offering a minimal 30-day discover earlier than every buyer’s scheduled migration.

Dropbox is not the one agency to difficulty related coverage adjustments in current months.

The transfer to finish limitless storage mirrors Google’s transfer after it discontinued the service for customers of its highest-tier Workspace plan. Microsoft additionally quietly banned crypto mining from its on-line providers on the finish of the earlier yr.

It is attainable that some disgruntled customers from the 2 IT giants’ choices shifted to Dropbox for its extra beneficiant storage limits. Nonetheless, with Dropbox now additionally curbing its limitless storage possibility, these in quest of expansive storage could must discover different providers that align with their necessities.