Become a Provider

Providers earn USDC by serving AI requests on the AntSeed network. This guide covers everything from setup to your first request.

Provider Compliance

AntSeed is designed for providers who build differentiated services — such as TEE-secured inference, domain-specific skills or agents, fine-tuned models, or managed product experiences. Simply reselling raw API access or subscription credentials is not the intended use and may violate your upstream provider's terms of service. Providers are solely responsible for complying with their upstream API provider's terms.

Seller ANTS emissions

Starting from the current epoch, seller ANTS emissions are tracked but routed into a dedicated Provider Pool and locked for now. These incentives are not freely claimable yet. Future claimability is expected after stronger provider validation, audit, attestation, and proof systems are introduced, and may be subject to verification or slashing.

Prerequisites

Node.js 20+
An AI API key (Anthropic, OpenAI, Together AI, or a local model)
A secp256k1 private key (your node identity)
ETH on Base Mainnet (for gas, ~$0.01 per transaction)
USDC on Base Mainnet (minimum $10 for staking)

1. Install

npm install -g @antseed/cli

2. Set Up Your Provider

Use the interactive wizard for first-time setup:

antseed seller setup

This creates or updates ~/.antseed/config.json. Once that file contains your provider and service definitions, the normal runtime command is just antseed seller start.

Or configure it manually:

antseed config seller add-provider together \
  --plugin openai \
  --base-url https://api.together.ai \
  --input 1 --cached 0.1 --output 2

--cached is optional and sets the default cached-input price in USD per 1M tokens. Use it when your upstream charges a reduced rate for cache hits (Anthropic, OpenAI, some Together models).

Then add one or more services:

antseed config seller add-service together deepseek-v3.1 \
  --upstream "deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1" \
  --input 0.6 --cached 0.06 --output 1.7 \
  --categories chat,math,coding

You're editing ~/.antseed/config.json

Every antseed seller setup / antseed config seller ... command is just a safe way to edit a single file: ~/.antseed/config.json. You can open it in any editor at any time and change providers, services, pricing, categories, or baseUrl by hand — the CLI and the JSON file are interchangeable.

After running the commands above, your file will look something like this:

{
  "seller": {
    "providers": {
      "together": {
        "plugin": "openai",
        "baseUrl": "https://api.together.ai",
        "defaults": {
          "inputUsdPerMillion": 1,
          "cachedInputUsdPerMillion": 0.1,
          "outputUsdPerMillion": 2
        },
        "services": {
          "deepseek-v3.1": {
            "upstreamModel": "deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1",
            "pricing": {
              "inputUsdPerMillion": 0.6,
              "cachedInputUsdPerMillion": 0.06,
              "outputUsdPerMillion": 1.7
            },
            "categories": ["chat", "math", "coding"]
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

See Configuration for the full schema, or run antseed config seller show to print your current file.

3. Set Your Identity

Your identity is a secp256k1 private key that serves as both your PeerId and your on-chain wallet address.

export ANTSEED_IDENTITY_HEX=<your-64-char-hex-private-key>

tip

Use a dedicated key for your provider node. Generate one with any EVM wallet tool. The corresponding address is where you'll receive USDC earnings.

4. Recommended: Set a Custom Base RPC URL

Production sellers should use their own Base JSON-RPC endpoint instead of relying on public defaults. Public RPCs are useful for testing, but they can be rate limited, slow during traffic spikes, or unavailable when your node needs to reserve, settle, register, or stake on-chain.

Set the standard environment variable in your deployment shell:

export ANTSEED_BASE_RPC_URL=https://base-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/<key>
antseed seller start

You can also pass it for a one-off seller run:

antseed seller start --base-rpc-url https://base-mainnet.infura.io/v3/<key>

For durable config-file based deployments, store it under payments.crypto.rpcUrl:

antseed config set payments.crypto.rpcUrl "https://base-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/<key>"

Runtime precedence is: --base-rpc-url flag, then ANTSEED_BASE_RPC_URL, then payments.crypto.rpcUrl, then AntSeed's built-in Base defaults.

5. Fund Your Wallet

Your wallet address needs:

ETH for gas fees (register, stake, settle transactions)
USDC for staking (minimum $10)

Send both to the EVM address derived from your identity key. You can find your address with:

antseed seller status

6. Register and Stake

# Register your identity on-chain (ERC-8004)
antseed seller register

# Stake USDC (minimum $10)
antseed seller stake 10

# Verify everything is ready
antseed seller status

7. Add Your Services

Everything you announce on the network lives in config.json under seller.providers[name].services[id]. One block per upstream provider plugin, one entry per service. The add-service command builds this for you:

# Anthropic: offer claude-sonnet at $3/$15 per million tokens, tagged for chat + coding
antseed config seller add-service anthropic claude-sonnet-4-6 \
  --input 3 --cached 0.3 --output 15 \
  --categories chat,coding

# Together AI (OpenAI-compatible): offer Kimi K2.5 and DeepSeek V3.1
antseed config seller add-service together kimi-k2.5 \
  --upstream "moonshotai/Kimi-K2.5" \
  --input 0.5 --output 2.8 \
  --categories math,coding \
  --base-url https://api.together.ai

# --cached is optional — set it when your upstream offers
# a discounted price for cached-input tokens
antseed config seller add-service together deepseek-v3.1 \
  --upstream "deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.1" \
  --input 0.6 --cached 0.06 --output 1.7 \
  --categories chat,math,coding

# Local model (Ollama) — one announced service per local model
antseed config seller add-service local-llm llama3.2:3b \
  --input 0 --output 0 \
  --categories chat,fast,free

The --upstream flag maps the buyer-facing service name to the upstream model id. Omit it when they're the same.

You only have to do this once per service. To see what you've configured:

antseed config seller show

8. Set Your API Key and Start Selling

Upstream credentials stay in environment variables. Your provider shape, service list, pricing, and baseUrl stay in config.json.

That means the common startup flow is:

# Anthropic config in config.json, secret in env
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=<your-key>
antseed seller start

# OpenAI-compatible config in config.json, secret in env
export OPENAI_API_KEY=<your-key>
antseed seller start

# Local model
antseed seller start

If you configured Together or OpenRouter with --base-url during setup, you do not need to export OPENAI_BASE_URL separately. antseed seller start reads baseUrl from config.json and passes it to the openai plugin automatically.

Runtime overrides for a one-off session (without editing config.json):

antseed seller start --provider anthropic --input-usd-per-million 3 --output-usd-per-million 15

9. Verify

Once running, your node is discoverable on the network:

# From another terminal, browse available providers
antseed network browse

For production monitoring, expose seller metrics with antseed metrics serve --role seller. See Metrics.

How Payments Work

A buyer connects and sends a ReserveAuth (session budget)
Your node calls reserve() on-chain to lock buyer funds
Requests flow freely — each one gets a SpendingAuth (cumulative spend authorization)
Your node calls settle() periodically to collect earned USDC
On session end, close() finalizes and releases remaining buyer funds

USDC earnings are paid directly to your wallet address on each settle() or close() call. No claim step needed for USDC.

Seller-side ANTS emissions are different: they are currently tracked but locked in the Provider Pool while stronger validation systems are developed. Provider ANTS claims may become available later and may be subject to verification or slashing.

Real usage only

ANTS incentives are designed for real provider contribution. Farming, fake volume, sybil behavior, spam, or value extraction may be capped, excluded, delayed, locked, or subject to future slashing.

Next Steps

Ant Agent — wrap your service with a knowledge-augmented agent
Configuration — full config reference
CLI Commands — all available commands
Metrics — monitor seller earnings, channels, requests, and tokens

Agent Skills

If you're using Claude Code or another agent, this skill can walk you through the full provider setup:

@skills/join-provider — step-by-step provider setup for Claude Code agents

Prerequisites​

1. Install​

2. Set Up Your Provider​

3. Set Your Identity​

4. Recommended: Set a Custom Base RPC URL​

5. Fund Your Wallet​

6. Register and Stake​

7. Add Your Services​

8. Set Your API Key and Start Selling​

9. Verify​

How Payments Work​

Next Steps​

Agent Skills​