storage: simplify decoding handling

[petrosagg]

Motivation

Tips for reviewer

Checklist

• [ ] This PR has adequate test coverage / QA involvement has been duly considered.
• [ ] This PR has an associated up-to-date design doc, is a design doc (template), or is sufficiently small to not require a design.
• [ ] If this PR evolves an existing $T ⇔ Proto$T mapping (possibly in a backwards-incompatible way), then it is tagged with a T-proto label.
• [ ] If this PR will require changes to cloud orchestration or tests, there is a companion cloud PR to account for those changes that is tagged with the release-blocker label (example).
• [ ] This PR includes the following user-facing behavior changes: