Mining
Miners, also referred to as “Workers” in Phala blockchain, provide computing power to the Phala Network. Anyone with the appropriate hardware can participate.
More information about hardware requirements: 👉 here
This section provides some theory about the mining concepts of Phala and additional background information.
To get directly started, feel free to check the quick start guide: 👉 here
Worker Registration
Registration is required before a worker or gatekeeper can join the network. After that, any parties with TEE-supported devices can serve as workers. To register as a validated worker in the blockchain, TEE runners need to run pRuntime and let it send a signed attestation report to gatekeepers.
pRuntime requests a Remote Attestation with a hash of the WorkerInfo committed in the attestation report. WorkerInfo includes the public key of IdentityKey and EcdhKey and other data collected from the enclave. By verifying the report, gatekeepers can know the hardware information of workers and ensure that they are running unmodified pRuntime.
Remote Attestation
The attestation report is relayed to the blockchain by register_worker() call. The blockchain has the trusted certificates to validate the attestation report. It validates:
- The signature of the report is correct;
- The embedded hash in the report matches the hash of the submitted
WorkerInfo;
register_worker() is called by workers, and a worker can only be assigned contracts when it has certain amounts of staking PHA tokens. On the blockchain there is a WorkerState map from the worker to the WorkerInfo entry. Gatekeepers will update the WorkerState map after they receive and verify the submitted WorkerInfo.
Offline Worker Detection
The pRuntime of a worker is regularly required to answer the online challenge as a heartbeat event on chain. The blockchain detects the liveness of workers by monitoring the interval of their heartbeat events. A worker is punished with the penalty of his staking tokens if it goes offline during a contract execution.