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Overview

“Compute fracking” is the metaphor for turning stranded compute into liquid, tradable supply. The idea parallels energy fracking: unlock capacity that already exists but is not economically usable due to coordination, trust, and payment friction.

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What Is Being Unlocked

  • Idle edge devices (laptops, workstations, gaming PCs)
  • Overprovisioned enterprise fleets sized for rare peaks
  • Stranded headroom in data centers where power and capacity sit unused

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The Mechanism

Compute fracking becomes possible when five layers are in place:
  1. Identity: agents and providers can authenticate without shared custody
  2. Transport: Nostr relays broadcast job requests and results
  3. Payments: Lightning or Spark settles per job, not per month
  4. Budgets: safe autonomous purchasing with caps and approvals
  5. Verification: pay only for outputs that validate
The “fracking fluid” is standardized job specs, discovery, micropayments, and verification that make tiny pockets of compute economically aggregatable.

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Demand Floor (Autopilot as First Buyer)

Autopilot acts as the guaranteed buyer, preventing the cold-start trap where supply appears but demand is thin. The loop is: Users pay Autopilot -> Autopilot buys jobs -> Providers earn sats -> Autopilot gets cheaper and faster -> More users join

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Verifiable Job Types (Early Focus)

  • oa.sandbox_run.v1 for tests, builds, and linting
  • oa.repo_index.v1 for embeddings and indexing artifacts
These workloads are objective and can be verified by hashes and exit codes, which enables pay-after-verify settlement.

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Reputation and Routing

Providers build reputation by completing verified jobs. Routing prefers the cheapest provider that meets reliability thresholds, and penalties apply for failed or fraudulent results.

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Supply Classes

A healthy market routes work to the right tier:
  • Single node devices for cheap batch jobs
  • LAN bundles for pooled local capacity
  • Datacenter nodes for low latency and SLA needs
  • Reserve pools for guaranteed fills

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What It Is Not

Compute fracking does not claim that consumer devices replace H100 clusters for high-SLA, low-latency workloads. The thesis is that a unified market routes the right workload to the right tier, collapsing prices for async and batch work.

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Status

Near-term roadmap (demand floor via Autopilot, then provider onboarding).