Storage Miner

The initial process where a miner prepares client data for storage. This involves:

• Sealing: Encoding the data into a unique cryptographic representation using a zk-SNARK-based Proof-of-Replication.
• Sector Creation: Committing the sealed data to a fixed-size sector (e.g., 32 or 64 GiB) on disk.
• On-Chain Commitment: Publishing the cryptographic commitment (the CommR) to the Filecoin blockchain, creating a verifiable storage deal.

The continuous, ongoing proof that a miner is storing its committed data correctly over time. This is the core of Filecoin's security model.

• WindowPoSt: Submitted to the chain every 24 hours for each active sector, proving continuous storage. Missed proofs result in slashing penalties.
• WinningPoSt: Submitted when a miner is elected to create a new block, proving storage of a randomly selected sector in a very short timeframe.

How miners acquire data to store and earn fees. This occurs via the Filecoin Plus program or standard deals.

• Storage Deals: Negotiated on-chain or via markets, specifying duration, price, and client address.
• Data Transfer: Ingesting client data via protocols like Graphsync or Bitswap.
• Verified Client Deals: Storage for clients verified by DataCap notaries, which earn the miner a 10x multiplier on their storage power for consensus.

How a miner's contribution is measured and rewarded within the network's consensus.

• Storage Power: The miner's share of the network's total proven storage, measured in Quality-Adjusted Power. Power from Verified Deals is weighted higher.
• Expected Consensus: The probability of winning the right to mine a block is directly proportional to the miner's storage power.
• Block Rewards: Miners earn FIL tokens for creating new blocks and for the storage and retrieval fees from their clients.

The specialized setup required for efficient and profitable mining operations.

• Compute-Intensive Sealing: Requires high-performance CPUs, GPUs, and ample RAM for the initial sealing process.
• Long-Term Storage: Reliable, high-capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) for committed sectors.
• High Uptime: Critical for submitting timely proofs; requires stable power and internet connectivity to avoid penalties.

The economic disincentives that ensure miners fulfill their commitments. Penalties are deducted from the miner's initial pledge collateral and earned rewards.

• Faults: Occur when a WindowPoSt is missed or a sector is unavailable. Results in a daily penalty.
• Termination: A miner voluntarily or forcibly removing a sector before its deal expires incurs a larger penalty.
• Consensus Faults: Severe penalties for malicious behavior, such as attempting to create two blocks in the same round.

Across all protocols, a storage miner's role involves specific technical and economic commitments:

• Hardware & Uptime: Maintaining reliable servers with high bandwidth and availability.
• Slashing Risk: Posting collateral (often in the native token) that can be slashed for faulty proofs or going offline.
• Proof Generation: Regularly creating cryptographic proofs (PoRep, PoSt, PoA) to verify honest storage.
• Market Participation: Bidding for storage deals or participating in consensus to earn rewards.

A storage miner's first critical security task is sector sealing, a computationally intensive process that encodes client data into a unique, miner-specific format. This process generates a Proof-of-Replication (PoRep), a cryptographic proof that the miner has created a unique, physically independent copy of the data. This prevents a single physical copy from being used to claim multiple storage deals, ensuring the network's redundancy.

To prove data is stored reliably over time, miners must submit Windowed Proofs of Spacetime (WindowPoSt). This requires them to generate and broadcast a cryptographic proof for a random subset of their stored sectors during assigned, short time windows (e.g., every 24 hours). Failure to submit a valid proof for a sector results in a storage fault, triggering slashing penalties and potential loss of the miner's staked collateral (initial pledge collateral).

The miner's financial stake (collateral) is the primary mechanism enforcing reliability. Penalties are automatically enforced via smart contract for:

• Storage faults: Failing to prove data is stored.
• Consensus faults: Attempting to undermine network consensus (e.g., double-signing). Penalties can include the loss of block rewards, a portion of the locked collateral, and the eventual termination of storage deals, making malicious or negligent behavior economically irrational.

Security for the client is enforced through a storage deal, a cryptographically signed agreement between client and miner recorded on-chain. The deal specifies duration, price, and replication parameters. The client's payment is locked in a smart contract and released to the miner incrementally as WindowPoSt proofs are successfully submitted. This cryptoeconomic model aligns incentives, ensuring miners are paid only for proven, reliable service.

A miner's operational setup directly impacts reliability and security. Key considerations include:

• Uptime: Requires high-availability infrastructure (power, internet) to meet proof deadlines.
• Storage Hardware: Enterprise-grade drives with low failure rates to prevent data loss.
• Geographic Distribution: Decentralization of miners across regions enhances network-wide data resilience against local outages or censorship.

While the protocol is trust-minimized, auxiliary reputation systems often emerge. Clients may select miners based on publicly verifiable on-chain metrics:

• Power: The amount of proven storage capacity.
• Sector Fault History: A record of past failures and slashing events.
• Deal Completion Rate. These metrics allow clients to assess miner reliability beyond the base protocol guarantees.

A miner's primary role is to continuously prove it is correctly storing client data. This is achieved through cryptographic proofs:

• Seal Proofs: Prove data was initially encoded and stored.
• WinningPoSt (Winning Proof-of-Spacetime): A proof required to win the right to mine a new block.
• WindowPoSt (Window Proof-of-Spacetime): Periodic proofs submitted to the chain to demonstrate ongoing, continuous storage, with penalties for failure.

Running a competitive storage miner requires specialized hardware optimized for the network's consensus mechanism (e.g., Proof-of-Spacetime). Key components include:

• High-Capacity Storage: Arrays of HDDs for storing sealed client data.
• GPU/CPU: For performing the intensive sealing process and generating proofs.
• Reliable Uptime: Essential for submitting WindowPoSts on schedule and avoiding slashing penalties.

Miners earn rewards through two primary streams:

• Block Rewards: Issued by the protocol for mining new blocks and securing the chain, similar to Proof-of-Work.
• Storage Fees: Paid by clients for the duration and amount of data stored. Miners compete in a decentralized marketplace to offer storage deals. Their reputation and reliability impact their ability to attract clients.

Data is stored in fixed-size units called sectors. A miner commits a sector to the chain, sealing client data into it. This commitment involves:

• Precommit: Depositing collateral and announcing the intent to seal a sector.
• Prove Commit: Submitting the final proof (Seal Proof) that the sector was sealed correctly. Once proven, the sector enters its active lifecycle, during which the miner must submit ongoing Proofs-of-Spacetime.

To ensure reliability, miners face financial penalties (slashing) for faults:

• Storage Faults: Failing to submit a valid WindowPoSt results in a penalty and eventual sector termination.
• Consensus Faults: Penalties for malicious behavior that threatens chain consensus.
• Deal Collateral: Client prepayments are slashed if the miner fails to serve the agreed-upon storage deal. These mechanisms align miner incentives with network security and data integrity.

While a Storage Miner is responsible for long-term persistence, a Retrieval Miner specializes in serving stored data to clients with low latency. They form a separate marketplace, competing to provide fast data retrieval. Some nodes may operate as both storage and retrieval miners, offering a full suite of services.

A network participant who specializes in the fast delivery of stored data to clients. Unlike a storage miner who provides long-term persistence, a retrieval miner competes to serve data with low latency and high bandwidth.

• Primary Function: Fetch and transmit stored data on-demand.
• Incentive Model: Earns retrieval fees paid per data delivery.
• Key Difference: Does not commit storage capacity or provide proofs over time.

A cryptographically signed agreement between a client and a storage miner to store data for a specified duration and price. It is the fundamental commercial transaction in a decentralized storage network.

• Components: Includes data CID, price, duration, and miner collateral.
• On-Chain Record: Deal terms are typically published to a blockchain for verifiability.
• SLA: The miner must provide continuous Proof of Storage for the deal's lifetime.

A fixed-size unit of storage capacity (e.g., 32 GiB or 64 GiB) that a storage miner commits to the network. It is the atomic unit for which Proofs of Space-Time are generated.

• Sealing: The process of preparing client data into a sector, which is computationally intensive.
• Commitment: A cryptographic commitment to the sector's contents is posted on-chain.
• Base Unit: All storage proofs and penalties are calculated per sector.

A cryptographic proof that a storage miner has physically allocated unique storage for a specific piece of data. It proves the data was encoded into a sector and is not merely being referenced multiple times.

• Purpose: Prevents miners from claiming to store more data than they physically have.
• Sealing Process: The encoding step that generates a unique replica of the client's data.
• Verification: Can be verified quickly by the network without downloading the data.

A proof that a storage miner is continuously storing the data they committed to over time. It is the ongoing work requirement that replaces energy-intensive mining.

• WindowPoSt: Submitted regularly (e.g., daily) to prove all sectors are maintained.
• Faults: Missing a proof results in penalties and eventual sector termination.
• Security: Provides the cryptographic assurance that the stored data is persistently available.

A quantity of the network's native token that a storage miner must lock when committing a new sector. It acts as a security deposit that is slashed for provable faults or consensus attacks.

• Purpose: Aligns miner incentives with network security and data integrity.
• Dynamic: The amount is often calculated based on network conditions and circulating supply.
• Vesting: Collateral is typically returned gradually as the sector's commitment period ends.