Economics
Revenue: bids you price, escrow that pays
You set bid pricing strategy in the provider daemon; the marketplace matches it against demand. Every lease you win is backed by escrow funded before the workload starts — verifiable on-chain — so revenue risk is settled before capacity is committed.
Usage is metered hourly and settles automatically after the 24-hour dispute window. There is no invoicing, no collections, and no accounts-receivable aging: settled usage is settled money.
Economics
Costs: validator fees and operations
VirtEngine charges 0% marketplace commission: settlement releases the agreed lease amount from escrow without a platform deduction. Chain transaction fees for actions such as bidding and usage submission compensate validators and are proposed at approximately 90% below standard network transaction fees. The daemon can manage those fees with batching. Your real cost base remains power, hardware, bandwidth, and people.
Economics
What raises realized prices
Anonymous capacity competes on price alone. Verified capacity competes on quality:
- Benchmarks (x/benchmark) — published measured performance lets tenants pay for verified capability
- Auditor-signed attributes (x/audit) — attested region, tier, and compliance claims unlock orders that require them
- Reviews (x/review) — lease-bound reputation compounds with every served workload and is yours permanently
- Confidential compute (x/enclave) — attested TEE capability is a premium, filterable attribute
Economics
The demand side you're selling into
Orders arrive from identity-verified tenants with funded escrow — from containerized services to HPC batch jobs. Attribute-constrained orders (audited claims, benchmarked hardware, enclave attestation) are where differentiated operators escape pure price competition.
Economics
A worked lifecycle
A tenant posts an order; your daemon bids your configured price; the tenant accepts. The workload runs on your Kubernetes cluster or HPC scheduler. Hourly usage records — signed, anomaly-screened — accumulate against the lease. Each clears its dispute window and settles: escrow pays the agreed lease amount, with no marketplace commission deducted. Your track record grows by one more served lease, and the next order prices a little better.