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Run a TEE-Attested Seller

A seller running on Intel TDX hardware can prove it — cryptographically, to every buyer, before any payment. This guide takes an existing seller (see Become a Provider) and adds TEE attestation via the antseed-verifier SDK, so buyers running --require-verifier will route to you.

Availability

Verifier SDK support landed in the CLI with PR #713 (July 2026). Check that your antseed seller start --help lists a --verifiers option; older releases don't have it.

How it works​

  • Your seller loads the SDK's prover at startup and advertises the capability verifier.antseed-verifier in its discovery metadata.
  • A buyer challenges you on the reserved route /_antseed/attest/antseed-verifier with a fresh nonce. The prover mints an Intel TDX quote bound to that nonce and your peer id, signs the evidence bundle with your identity key, and returns it.
  • The buyer verifies the quote against Intel's DCAP certificate chain locally. Attestation runs before provider matching, payment, and metering — it is free and unmetered, and rate-limited to 10 attestations per buyer per minute.

If the prover fails to load at startup, the seller exits rather than advertising a capability it can't answer.

Prerequisites​

  • A genuine Intel TDX VM — e.g. a GCP c3 confidential VM (Ubuntu 24.04) with TDX enabled. The prover mints quotes through configfs-tsm (/sys/kernel/config/tsm/report), which only exists on real TDX hardware and requires root.
  • A working seller (antseed seller start serving requests) on that VM.
  • Node.js 20+.

1. Install the verifier SDK​

The CLI resolves the id antseed-verifier to the npm package @antseed/antseed-verifier, version-pinned, and auto-installs it into ~/.antseed/plugins on first use (npm install --ignore-scripts under the hood).

Until the package is published to npm, install it into the plugins directory from source:

git clone https://github.com/AntSeed/antseed-verifier
cd antseed-verifier
npm install && npm run build && npm pack
npm install --prefix ~/.antseed/plugins ./antseed-antseed-verifier-*.tgz

The loader expects the package at ~/.antseed/plugins/node_modules/@antseed/antseed-verifier.

2. Configure the prover​

The prover reads its configuration from the environment only — never from buyer-supplied values:

# Required: your peer id (EVM address, without 0x)
export ANTSEED_TEE_PEER_ID=<your-peer-id>

# Recommended: your seller identity key (hex). Enables the seller-bound
# capability — the evidence bundle is signed so buyers can recover your peerId.
# Disabled automatically if the key's address doesn't match ANTSEED_TEE_PEER_ID.
export ANTSEED_VERIFIER_SIGNING_KEY=<hex-private-key>

# Node quote source. Defaults to configfs; leave unset on a standard TDX VM.
# export ANTSEED_VERIFIER_NODE_TEE=configfs

3. Start the seller with the verifier​

sudo -E antseed seller start --verifiers antseed-verifier

(sudo because configfs quote minting needs root; -E preserves the environment.)

Three equivalent ways to enable it, in precedence order:

  1. --verifiers antseed-verifier on the command line
  2. ANTSEED_VERIFIER_SDKS=antseed-verifier in the environment
  3. "verifiers": ["antseed-verifier"] under seller in ~/.antseed/config.json (the antseed seller setup wizard can write this)

The first id in the list becomes your advertised default. On success you'll see:

Verifier prover embedded: antseed-verifier
Verifiers advertised: antseed-verifier

4. Confirm you're advertising​

From any other machine:

antseed network peer <your-peer-id>
# → Verifiers:       antseed-verifier (default)

antseed network browse also shows a Verifier column once any peer advertises one.

5. Attest your inference provider too (optional)​

The two gating capabilities (seller-node-tee-genuine, seller-bound) cover your node. If your downstream inference provider also runs confidential hardware, the prover can relay its evidence so buyers see it — seller-provider-tee-genuine, seller-provider-gpu-cc (NVIDIA Confidential Computing), and seller-provider-measured-image are reported for buyer policy:

# An endpoint that returns the provider's evidence for a nonce ({nonce} → hex)
export ANTSEED_VERIFIER_PROVIDER_EVIDENCE_URL='http://127.0.0.1:9000/evidence?nonce={nonce}'
export ANTSEED_VERIFIER_PROVIDER_TEE_FIELD=quote

# The frozen report_data binding scheme the provider's quote uses:
#   antseed-rd-v1            — AntSeed's canonical scheme
#   nonce-pubkey-sha256-v1   — used by e.g. Chutes
export ANTSEED_VERIFIER_PROVIDER_BINDING_SCHEME=antseed-rd-v1
export ANTSEED_VERIFIER_PROVIDER_BINDING_PUBKEY_FIELD=e2e_pubkey

# Optional: per-GPU NVIDIA CC evidence field → enables seller-provider-gpu-cc
# export ANTSEED_VERIFIER_PROVIDER_GPU_FIELD=gpu_evidence

The SDK is provider-agnostic — no vendor hosts or schemas are baked in. Pointing at a different confidential-inference backend is configuration only. For a worked example against a live third-party TDX provider (Chutes), including the small auth shim it needs, see the SDK's e2e guide.

6. Test the full loop as a buyer​

From a second machine (no special hardware needed):

antseed buyer start --verifiers antseed-verifier --require-verifier --peer <your-peer-id>

Send any request through the proxy. The buyer log should show:

Verified <your-peer-id>... via antseed-verifier

If attestation fails under --require-verifier, the request is refused with a 502 naming the failed claims — which is exactly the guarantee your buyers are paying for.

Troubleshooting​

SymptomCause
Seller exits at startup with a verifier load errorSDK not installed in ~/.antseed/plugins, or its version doesn't match the CLI's pinned version
seller-node-tee-genuine fails locallyNot a genuine TDX VM, not running as root, or configfs-tsm unavailable
seller-bound missing from verdictsANTSEED_VERIFIER_SIGNING_KEY unset, or its address doesn't match ANTSEED_TEE_PEER_ID
Buyer reports TCB failuresHost platform needs microcode/TCB updates; buyers running ANTSEED_VERIFIER_STRICT_TCB=true accept only UpToDate

See also​