The Machine Economy
Who sells on Tenzro Network 1, who buys, and how every unit of inference, compute and storage is metered and settled.
The Machine Economy is the market Tenzro Network 1 is built for: machines, agents and people buying and selling inference, compute, training, data and storage from each other, and settling what they owe on a ledger that meters every use. This page is the overview. Each part links to the page that covers it in depth.
Who sells
Anyone with hardware can sell on Network 1. There is no allowlist and no minimum company size.
- A home PC with a GPU, a hobbyist's homelab, or a small office server.
- Independent data centres of every size and neo-clouds.
- Existing data-centre operators who want another channel for their compute or their models.
A seller is an operator. One node binary takes any set of roles under one identity, and one bond covers the obligations of every role it takes on.
| Role | What it sells |
|---|---|
| Validator | Block production and finality under Tenzro DAG Consensus (TDC) |
| RPC provider | Metered access to the network for its tenants |
| AI (model) provider | Inference for any model it serves |
| Compute (GPU) provider | Capacity rented by the epoch, including confined shell sessions |
| Data and storage provider | Content-addressed storage with bonded SLAs, databases |
| Security (TEE) provider | Attested confidential execution |
| Training provider | Rounds of decentralised training |
See Operators and roles for how to take on each role.
Who buys
- Developers building AI-native applications who want custom pricing, open frontier models and an alternative to hyperscalers.
- Organisations in regulated industries that need transparency and control over which model runs, where the data sits and which hardware does the work.
- Privacy-conscious teams with sensitive workloads that must run inside attested hardware.
- Model developers and researchers who need compute and distributed training.
- Agents and machines that buy inference and compute on their own account, within limits set by the human or organisation that owns them.
A buyer needs an account and a way to pay. Human accounts are rooted in a passkey and machine accounts in a device key, so an agent pays from its own hardware-rooted account rather than a shared secret. See Hardware-rooted keys.
What is traded
| Product | Unit | Proof that it was delivered |
|---|---|---|
| Inference | Tokens, images, audio or video seconds, per request | Signed receipts, TEE attestation where required |
| Compute rental | Epochs of reserved capacity | A per-epoch availability proof |
| Compute claims | Capacity by hardware class, region, delivery window and SLA | Metered, attested delivery in each epoch of the window |
| Storage | Byte-epochs | A per-epoch proof of retrievability |
| Training | Rounds | Rounds replayable from their seed |
| Network access | RPC calls | The provider's metering against a tenant API key |
How prices are set
Each provider sets its own price, either a fixed rate or a network-dynamic rate that moves with utilisation. Buyers see the effective rate before they commit.
Alongside individual prices, Network 1 publishes a compute price index built from metered usage that actually settled, and commits it to consensus so every node reads the same value. The index gives buyers and agents a reference price that nobody can quote their way into. See Compute claims and the price index.
How it settles
Metered, per-use settlement is the default. A buyer pays for what was delivered, in the unit that was delivered, and nothing more:
- The buyer funds the payment: a prepaid balance, an escrow, a payment channel, or a per-request payment over HTTP 402.
- The provider delivers and the network meters the delivery: tokens served, epochs available, bytes retrievable.
- The chain decides. An epoch that passed its proof pays the provider; an epoch that failed pays nothing and the buyer keeps that slice.
- The settled payment is divided once, between the operator and the network, and lands in each party's balance.
Rental and storage billing follow the chain's verdict, not the provider's word or the buyer's. See SLA attestation and metering and Settlement.
What it settles in
TNZO is the network's token. It pays every network fee and every transaction settlement, bonds operators and weights governance votes. See Token economics.
Stablecoins are fully supported for buyers and sellers who price in dollars:
- Stablecoin wallets and payouts through Bridge.xyz. See Stablecoin payments.
- Per-request payment over HTTP 402 with x402 and MPP, so an agent can pay for a call without an account relationship.
- Gas paid in stablecoins, so a stablecoin-only buyer never has to hold TNZO to transact. See Paymaster.
- The ACP buyer side, so agents on Tenzro can buy from merchants that accept agent checkout. See Agent commerce.
A payee declares which asset it settles in. A provider earning in stablecoins keeps stablecoins unless it asks for TNZO.
How buyers trust sellers
Price alone is not enough to pick a provider. Every operator publishes a signed policy describing what it offers, and is slashed only for a provable breach of that policy. Anyone can certify or rate models and operators, and each buyer chooses which issuers it relies on. A regulated buyer can require a compliance tier, a jurisdiction or an attested TEE before its request is routed. See Trust and provenance and Operator policies.
Where to go next
- Sell capacity: Compute rental and Compute claims and the price index.
- Understand billing and penalties: SLA attestation and metering.
- Pay and get paid: Settlement and Payments.
- The token and who governs it: Token economics and Governance.