Ring Miners are a group of cryptocurrency miners who collude to manipulate the proof-of-work consensus mechanism in a blockchain network. They do this by forming a "ring" of miners who work together to mine blocks, thus increasing their chances of getting rewards and dominating the network.
The basic idea behind Ring Miners is to increase their chances of solving the mathematical puzzle required to mine a new block and earn the block reward. By working together, they can pool their computational power, making it easier to solve the puzzle and mine blocks. This gives them a competitive advantage over other miners who are working alone, as they have a higher chance of mining blocks and receiving rewards.
Ring Miners pose a significant threat to the security and decentralization of blockchain networks. By controlling a large portion of the network's computational power, they can manipulate the consensus mechanism, leading to centralization of the network. This can result in the formation of a small group of actors who have the power to make decisions on behalf of the network, reducing the transparency and accountability of the system.
To mitigate the risk posed by Ring Miners, blockchain networks can implement anti-collusion mechanisms that make it more difficult for miners to form rings. For example, some networks use algorithms that adjust the difficulty of mining new blocks based on the amount of computational power that is available on the network. This helps to prevent miners from pooling their computational power and forming rings.

Cryptocurrency Mining: In cryptocurrency mining, ring miners are a type of miner who participate in a mining pool, or a group of miners who combine their computing power to increase their chances of finding a block and receiving a reward. In a ring miner setup, miners join together in a circular formation to share their computational power and improve their chances of finding a block. This helps to reduce the variance in mining rewards, as all miners in the ring are rewarded proportionally based on their contribution to the pool's computational power.
Distributed Storage Networks: In distributed storage networks, ring miners can be used to maintain the integrity and availability of stored data. For example, a ring miner might be responsible for maintaining multiple copies of a file across different nodes in the network. In the event that a node fails or becomes unavailable, the ring miner can use data from other nodes to reconstruct the missing data, ensuring that the file remains available and secure.
Decentralized Networks: In decentralized networks, ring miners can be used to validate transactions and maintain the integrity of the network. For example, in a decentralized payment network, a ring miner might validate transactions between users, ensuring that all transactions are valid and that funds are being transferred correctly. By using ring miners, decentralized networks can improve their security and efficiency, reducing the risk of fraud and ensuring that transactions are processed in a timely manner.

Ring miners are a type of people who participate in the process of verifying and adding transactions to a blockchain, which is like a digital ledger that keeps track of all the transactions made with a certain cryptocurrency.
Think of ring miners as people who help make sure everyone is playing fair in a game of sharing and exchanging digital coins. Just like how referees in a game make sure everyone is following the rules, ring miners make sure that every transaction made with digital coins is valid and properly recorded in the blockchain.
Ring miners are called "ring" miners because they form a "ring" of multiple people working together to verify transactions. This makes the process of verifying transactions more secure, because it's harder for one person to cheat or make a mistake when they're part of a team.