Sealing-as-a-service

This page describes how sealing-as-a-service works, and the benefits to storage providers.

Storage providers with hardware cost or availability constraints can use Sealing-as-a-service, in which another provider performs sector sealing on the storage providers behalf. This page describes how sealing-as-a-service works, and the benefits to storage providers.

Overview

In a traditional setup, a storage provider needs high-end hardware to build out a sealing pipeline. Storage providers with hardware cost or availability constraints can use Sealing-as-a-Service providers, where another provider performs sector sealing on the storage provider’s behalf. In this model, the following occurs:

  1. The storage provider provides the data to the sealer

  2. The sealer seals the data into sectors.

  3. The sealer returns the sealed sectors in exchange for a service cost.

Benefits

Sealing-as-a-service provides multiple benefits for storage providers:

  • Available storage can be filled faster, thereby maximizing block rewards, without investing in a complex, expensive sealing pipeline.

  • Bigger deals can be onboarded, as Sealing-as-a-Service essentially offers a burst capability in your sealing capacity. Thus, storage providers can take on larger deals without worrying about sealing time and not meeting client expectations.

  • Storage capacity on the Filecoin network can be expanded without investing in a larger sealing pipeline.

Other solutions are possible where the sealing partner seals committed capacity (CC) sectors for you, which you in turn snap up to data sectors.

See the following video from Aligned about their offering of Sealing-as-a-Service:

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