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Become a provider

Providers earn USDC by serving AI requests to buyers on the Antseed network. This guide takes you from a fresh machine to a seller that buyers can reach.

Add value, don't resell access

Antseed is for providers who build differentiated services: TEE-secured inference, domain-specific skills or agents, fine-tuned models, or managed products. Reselling raw API access or subscription credentials is not the intended use and may violate your upstream provider's terms. The subscription-based plugins (claude-code, claude-oauth, openai-responses) are for testing only. You are responsible for complying with your upstream provider's terms.

Prerequisites​

  • Node.js 20 or newer.
  • An upstream to serve from: an OpenAI-compatible API key, an Anthropic API key, or a local model server (Ollama or llama.cpp).
  • A little ETH on Base for the gas your seller spends on registration and settlement.
  • A machine with a public IP address, or a port you can forward to it.

1. Install the CLI​

Terminal
npm install -g @antseed/cli

See Install for other options.

2. Create your identity​

Your identity is a secp256k1 private key. Its EVM address is both your peer ID on the network and the wallet that receives your USDC.

Run the setup wizard. It creates a key at ~/.antseed/identity.key if you don't have one, then walks you through adding a provider and services:

Terminal
antseed seller setup

To use a key you already manage (for example from a secrets manager), set it in the environment instead. It takes precedence over identity.key:

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

Use a dedicated key for your seller. To encrypt identity.key at rest, see Protecting wallet keys; an encrypted key needs ANTSEED_PASSPHRASE or ANTSEED_PASSPHRASE_FILE set whenever the seller starts.

3. Fund and register​

Send a small amount of ETH on Base to your seller address, then register your identity on-chain:

Terminal
antseed seller status     # shows your wallet address
antseed seller register
antseed seller status     # "Seller eligible" should now be true

Staking is optional for selling. To earn ANTS rewards on top of USDC, see Staking.

For production, point the seller at your own Base RPC endpoint rather than the public default. See Base RPC.

4. Add services​

Everything you announce lives in ~/.antseed/config.json. If you skipped the wizard, add a provider (which installs its plugin) and then one entry per service:

Terminal
antseed config seller add-provider inference \
  --plugin openai \
  --base-url https://api.example-inference.com

antseed config seller add-service inference deepseek-v4-flash \
  --upstream "<upstream-model-id>" \
  --input 0.25 --cached 0.025 --output 1 \
  --categories coding

antseed config seller add-service inference kimi-k2.6 \
  --upstream "<upstream-model-id>" \
  --input 0.6 --cached 0.06 --output 2.5 \
  --categories coding

Prices are USD per million tokens. --upstream maps the service name buyers request to your upstream's model ID; omit it when they match. Set --base-url without the /v1 suffix, because the plugin appends the request path.

For a local model, use the local-llm plugin:

Terminal
antseed config seller add-provider ollama --plugin local-llm
antseed config seller add-service ollama gpt-oss-120b --input 0 --output 0

See Seller configuration for capabilities, categories, free-tier limits and every other setting, and Image and video services for per-image and per-video pricing.

5. Start the seller​

Upstream credentials stay in environment variables; everything else comes from config.json:

Terminal
export OPENAI_API_KEY=<your-upstream-key>
antseed seller start

seller start checks before it begins announcing: at least one service per provider, ETH for gas, and on-chain registration. It prints what is missing and the command that fixes it.

6. Make sure buyers can reach you​

The seller listens on UDP 6881 (DHT) and TCP 6882 (buyer connections). Allow both through your firewall, then tell buyers which address to dial:

Terminal
antseed config seller set publicAddress "peer.example.com:6882"
antseed seller doctor

seller doctor checks that the announced address is public and opens a TCP connection to it. A successful local probe does not prove that the port is open from outside, so confirm from another network:

Terminal
antseed network peer <peerId>

Your services, prices and categories should appear. Run antseed network browse to see where you sit among other providers.

Next steps​

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