# Background
Starting filecoin storage providing could be a daunting task given not only the large initial hardware and filecoin collateral investment (opens new window) but also the entailing operation commitment. With ideas of distributed infrastracture, optimized storage deal experience and new storage power service in mind, Venus implementation of filecoin will help storage providers turn, what community say, a full time job (opens new window) into a fully fledged solution that is more friendly to opeartion. Hope this tutorial will get you started mining in no time!
# Start Storage Providing
There are two ways of getting started with storage providing using Venus products.
- Deploy minimum hardware and gain access to a publicly hosted Sophon service. Check out Venus SP Incubator program (opens new window) to learn how you can gain access to a free hosted Sophon service.
- Deploy a Sophon service by yourself. (Please refer to this tutorial to learn more)
After following the rest of the trutorial and successful deployment, you can start pledging sectors, grow power and evantually obtain block rewards through your contribution to the network's storage capacity!
# Introducing Venus Products
Sophon service could be thought as the plumbings of what you need to start sealing sectors. Most of the interactions with the blockchain like chain synchronizations, sending messages, winning a block and etc are handled by the Sophon service. The idea is that many miners could all use one Sophon service, thus reducing overhead in maintainence. Local system deployment handles sealing and proving of your sectors, where you will be spend most of your time if you choose to use a publicly hosted Sophon service.
| name | role | product |
|---|---|---|
| venus (opens new window) | daemon for chain interactions | Venus |
| sophon-miner (opens new window) | block winning and proving | Sophon |
| sophon-messager (opens new window) | chain message management | Sophon |
| sophon-auth (opens new window) | utility for authorized use of shared modules | Sophon |
| sophon-gateway (opens new window) | utility for controlled access point of shared modules | Sophon |
| venus-wallet (opens new window) | addresses/keys management | Venus |
| damocles (opens new window) | job scheduling, sealing and proving | Damocles |
| droplet (opens new window) | deal making | Droplet |
| ‼️Deprecated; |
# Mining Architecture
Diagram below illustrates how Venus products interact with one and another.
# Hardware requirements
Learn more about hardware requirements here (opens new window). Check out this solo mining guide (opens new window) by one of the comunity members. As a sidetone, everyone may have different hardware setups, and it is recommended that you find your own optimal configurations through trial and errors.
WARNING
For damocles, you could refer to this community test report (opens new window) for hardware reference. Plan your hardware carefully, when in doubt please seek help from Venus Master (opens new window).