Sector

The Sector is a fundamental "storage container" abstraction used in Filecoin Storage Mining. It is the basic unit of storage, and serves to make storage conform to a set of expectations.

New sectors are empty upon creation. As the miner receives client data, they fill or "pack" the piece(s) into an unsealed sector.

Once a sector is full, the unsealed sector is combined by a proving tree into a single root UnsealedSectorCID. The sealing process then encodes (using CBOR) an unsealed sector into a sealed sector, with the root SealedSectorCID.

This diagram shows the composition of an unsealed sector and a sealed sector.

Unsealed Sectors and Sealed Sectors

TODO:

• describe sizing ranges of sectors

• describe "storage/shipping container" analogy