Private clouds
Dedicated projects and managed cloud capacity
VirtEngine Protocol · by DET.io
The decentralized cloud marketplace protocol
VirtEngine connects tenants who need computing resources with providers who have capacity to lease — through a transparent on-chain marketplace with built-in identity, escrow, and settlement.
- License
- Apache 2.0
- Consensus
- CometBFT
- Framework
- Cosmos SDK
- Patent
- AU2024203136B2
Marketplace surface
One catalogue for far more than containers
Waldur is VirtEngine's primary marketplace and service-management integration: it presents a self-service catalogue for standard cloud capacity and fully custom provider offerings, while the protocol coordinates identity, exchange and settlement.
Waldur-connected marketplace
Explore available offerings
Storage
Volume, object and archival service listings
VMs
Virtual-machine and accelerator-backed capacity
Custom offerings
Provider-defined services, products and workflows
What it is
A marketplace run by consensus, not by a company
VirtEngine Suite is a single Go binary — a CometBFT-powered blockchain node implementing a decentralized exchange for computing capacity, plus the client tooling to use it.
Tenants describe the resources they need in an on-chain order. Provider daemons — running inside datacenters, clouds, and HPC facilities — watch the chain and place competing bids. A matched bid becomes a lease: escrow is funded and Waldur coordinates fulfilment from a catalogue that can include private clouds, storage, VMs, and fully custom offerings. Kubernetes and HPC schedulers are delivery targets within that broader marketplace, and signed usage records flow back to the chain where settlement releases payment.
Every step is protocol state. Identity checks come from VEID, funds are protected by the escrow and settlement modules, and provider quality is tracked through audits, benchmarks, and reviews — all on-chain.
The protocol is partly derived from the Akash Network codebase and extends it with identity scoring, HPC scheduling, confidential compute, and a patented validator-run identity network. The full walkthrough is in how the marketplace works.
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Order
A tenant posts a deployment order on-chain describing the resources they need — compute, memory, storage, region, and attributes.
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Bid
Provider daemons watching the chain place competing bids against open orders on behalf of their configured providers.
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Lease
The tenant's winning bid becomes a lease. Escrow is funded, and the provider daemon instantiates the workload through its orchestration layer.
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Usage
The provider daemon meters running workloads and submits signed usage records to the chain on a scheduled cadence.
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Settlement
After a 24-hour dispute window, the settlement module converts usage into billable line items and releases the agreed escrowed funds to the provider with no marketplace commission deducted.
Protocol pillars
Five capabilities, one chain
27 on-chain modules organized around a marketplace core — every one documented in the module reference.
x/market · x/deployment
On-chain marketplace
Orders, competing bids, and leases are chain state — not a trusted intermediary. The exchange is the protocol itself, executed by consensus.
x/veid · x/veidregistry
VEID identity
A privacy-preserving identity layer scores encrypted identity scopes through validator-run machine learning, so counterparties are verified without exposing raw documents.
x/escrow · x/settlement
Escrow & settlement
Leases are backed by escrowed funds. Metered usage becomes billable line items after a 24-hour dispute window, releasing payment trustlessly.
x/hpc
HPC workloads
SLURM, MOAB, and Open OnDemand clusters plug into the marketplace through the provider daemon — supercomputing capacity, leased on-chain.
x/enclave · x/encryption
Confidential compute
Enclave attestation and public-key encryption keep sensitive workloads and on-chain data readable only by their intended recipients.
One reference page per module: what it does, why it exists, and how it connects to the rest of the chain.
Browse all 27 modulesSolutions
Find your way into the network
Whether you run hardware, hold tokens, or ship workloads — there is a documented path in.
GPU compute providers
Monetize GPU capacity on an open marketplace
HPC clusters
Put supercomputing capacity on the marketplace
Validators
Run a validator with a dual mandate
Confidential compute
Confidential computing with proof, not promises
AI/ML workloads
Source training and inference capacity on-chain
Cost-optimized cloud
Cloud economics set by open bidding
Learn
The protocol, explained properly
Guides grounded in the repository and its economic simulation framework — no filler, no invented numbers.
How the VirtEngine marketplace works VirtEngine combines a Waldur-connected, multi-service catalogue with a five-stage protocol lifecycle: order, bid, lease, usage, settlement. … Escrow and settlement, explained The hardest problem in any compute marketplace is not matching — it's money. Who holds the funds? Who verifies the meter? What happens when … VirtEngine tokenomics, explained VirtEngine's proposed economic model recognizes sustained, unique verified identity while retaining a conservative staking component for net… What is VEID? VEID turns identity verification into a protocol function. Instead of outsourcing KYC to a company that warehouses your documents, VirtEngin…
Stewardship
Open source, patented, held in public benefit
Apache 2.0 licensed
The entire protocol implementation is free to use, modify, and distribute. Development happens in the open — issues, pull requests, and release engineering are all public.
Patented methods
Core methods — including the validator-run identity verification network — are protected by patent AU2024203136B2. The Apache 2.0 patent grant covers use within this project; see the IP notice for details.
Foundation stewardship
VirtEngine is stewarded by DETIO FOUNDATION LTD, an Australian not-for-profit public company limited by guarantee with a constitutional public-benefit lock — the protocol cannot be privately captured.