Providing capacity

Becoming a provider

Three transactions: register (your stable provider identity, a rotatable operator key, and your serving endpoint — on chain, so relays discover you without asking anyone), deposit bond, and post capacity obligations. An obligation commits units to a book at your ask price, over a time window, backed by locked bond. You can post obligations to a book that is not listed yet — that is exactly how new books accumulate the bonded capacity listing requires. Obligations activate the block after they post, and cancels take effect only after a delay: there is no same-block post-and-vanish.

The bond math

Your collateral price per unit is your history, applied mechanically:

margin = 1
       + no_ack_rate        × no_ack_weight
       + slash_rate         × slash_weight
       + challenge_loss_rate × challenge_loss_weight

bond required per reserved unit = ⌊ base_bond_per_unit × margin ⌋
capacity you can win at auction = ⌊ your free bond ÷ bond per unit ⌋

A clean provider runs at margin 1×. Only finalized, objective failures raise your rates — a pending or frivolous challenge never moves your margin. When a lease clears, the bond backing it locks, and that locked amount is the hard ceiling on your liability for that lease: every recovery path is bounded by it.

Earnings

gross = max(actual usage, reservation floor) × clearing price
net   = gross − protocol fee (rate locked into the lease at creation)

The reservation floor is your compensation for holding capacity ready — 10% of reserved units on one-shot work, rising to 30% on batch jobs (devnet values; governed per lease type — and note those two lease types are defined in spec, not yet offered on any book; today's catalog is agent sessions at 20%). Buyers cannot reserve your capacity and pay nothing. You are paid at every settlement batch as usage accrues, with the floor charged at most once per lease; at terminal close the numbers true up, the buyer's unused escrow refunds, and — on a clean close — your entire bond releases. The relay fee never touches you: it is buyer-side.

What gets you slashed

When a slash lands, the money runs a fixed waterfall: the buyer is made whole first, then the challenger's reward, then a treasury penalty — paid from the lease's locked bond, and after close from your available balance. Two asymmetries to know: fee slices are never reversed, so your clawback liability covers the buyer's full overpayment including the fees; and a buyer who simply declines to accept your valid work is not a fault — the fill refunds, your bond releases, and your reputation does not move. Buyer refusal is priced risk, not punishment.

Third-party bond (surety)

Others can back your bond through explicit, both-signed grants. The capital stays surety-owned, attributed to you, one grant per provider — and a minimum share of every bond must be your own, enforced both when you post and when a lease clears. When a slash burns the backing, your own capital burns first; sureties burn pro-rata after. Exits require notice, and committed amounts stay slashable until every backed lease and challenge window has closed. Session-key and surety machinery are testnet-gating items — the rules are frozen; the public listing waits on them.

Reputation is collateral, not vibes

Five counters follow you on chain: completed fills, settled volume, no-acks, slashes, challenge losses. The margin formula above reads exactly these — nothing else. Only finalized objective events move them; buyer refusals never do. Your reputation is not a score someone assigns; it is a price you pay per unit of future capacity.

On yield