The most underestimated pain point of storage protocols isn't really about whether the technology can be implemented, but rather a more practical question: do users dare to truly rely on it.

How painful is the current situation? Fees fluctuate wildly—skyrocketing one day and plummeting the next—making it impossible for projects to budget costs properly. The inevitable result is that everyone throws critical data back into centralized cloud services, reducing on-chain storage to a "dormant tool." In this model, no matter how advanced the technology is, it's hard to sustain real long-term application scenarios.

The root of the problem is that the interests of both sides aren't aligned. What users really care about is: monthly spending stays under control. What node operators really care about is: revenue streams keep flowing. But existing fee models often fall short on both counts.

One project takes a different approach—it optimizes the payment and fee mechanism design logic from the source, aiming to make costs more predictable in fiat currency terms. Imagine what happens when storage costs become as stable and calculable as rent. AI datasets requiring stable storage, game asset libraries needing long-term hosting, on-chain archives requiring permanent preservation... these real application demands would gradually migrate on-chain, rather than relying on funding subsidies to chase short-term hype.

What's worth watching, then, is whether these protocols can truly eliminate "price volatility anxiety" at the infrastructure layer. Once that's achieved, the storage track could finally evolve from an "experimental tool" into "production-grade infrastructure."