What Are Repair Miners?

Repair miners are a proposed type of mining node within the Filecoin network. They are distinct from two other types of miners: storage miners and retrieval miners. Note that repair miners are a feature of the Filecoin network that has not yet been implemented.

Filecoin’s developers have defined repair nodes as a type of node that facilitates “network self-healing.” To understand this, we can consider the structure of Filecoin, a decentralized system for data storage, and some aspects of the network’s operations.

In the Filecoin network, data is stored in sectors, which are each of a fixed size. Storage miners fill these sectors with data that is stored on behalf of their clients, who contract the storage miners’ services for a particular period of time. These contracts between storage miners and their clients are referred to as deals. Repair miners are envisioned as a third actor that could ultimately intercede in the case of an unreliable storage miner and help address the risks posed by this.