How the Network Works
Three participant classes interact through a single job market. Every job — regardless of which lane it comes from — follows the same path through the gateway, the scheduler, and the worker, and produces the same signed receipt that ties together verification, billing, and settlement.
Three Participant Classes
The network does not try to make all participants do everything. Each class has exactly one job, and the incentive structure for that job is as clean as possible.
Holders stake $ONE above the minimum threshold and receive a daily credit allotment. Credits refresh at the start of each epoch and do not roll over — the design keeps the treasury's daily obligation bounded and predictable. Holders consume inference through the Included lane at per-model catalog rates and participate in governance proportional to their stake.
Sponsors buy USDC capacity packages through the Dedicated lane. A package grants priority placement in the job queue, reserved concurrency, unrestricted model access, and a service-level target. Sponsors can hold a package and a token allotment simultaneously — the package raises priority and lifts caps, while the Included allotment provides baseline credits on top.
Workers supply GPU capacity, execute inference jobs, and settle in USDC every six hours. Stable stablecoin income with no token-price exposure is what attracts professional GPU operators. A worker's reliability score rises with verified completions and falls with timeouts and failed verifications — score feeds routing priority, so reliable capacity earns more.
Job Flow, Step by Step
Every inference request — whether from a holder consuming free credits or a sponsor on the Dedicated lane — follows this path.
Credit Mechanics in Detail
Daily refresh
The credit balance resets to the published allotment A_d at the start of each daily epoch. Unused credits do not roll over. This keeps the treasury's daily obligation bounded and predictable — the protocol always knows the maximum USDC it needs to pre-purchase for the next day's free inference.
Receipt-based metering
Each request deducts credits at the model's catalog rate, computed from the receipt after the job completes. The deduction always matches verified work delivered — you are never charged for a job the receipt chain shows was not completed correctly.
Balance visibility
The client shows remaining balance in real time, the projected cost of the next request before it is sent, and the exact time until the next refresh. There is never a surprise charge because there is, structurally, never a charge.
Soft-stop conversion
When the daily balance is exhausted, the interface presents the Dedicated lane upgrade rather than silently blocking. The moment a user runs out of free credits is the moment of highest intent — the natural conversion point. The soft-stop is a deliberate product mechanic, not an error state.
The Allotment Bound
The allotment is adaptive. It rises when activity is high and contracts when revenue falls. Published each epoch — no hidden adjustments.
Sybil Resistance
Because access mints credits, a naive design rewards splitting stake across many wallets. ONE counters this structurally — through economic design, not identity verification.
- Minimum stake threshold per eligible account — wallets below it receive zero credits
- Credit issuance scales sub-linearly with account count for a given total stake
- One unit of stake yields the same aggregate credits in one wallet or ten — splitting is never profitable
Technical Questions
Answers to the most common questions about how the network mechanics work under the hood.