Become a Provider

Step-by-step guide to becoming a GPU Computing Provider on Swan 2.0 Inference Cloud

This guide walks through turning your GPU into an AI inference endpoint on Swan Chain — from starting a local model server, to installing the computing-provider agent, to earning stablecoin revenue from real inference traffic.

Looking to consume models instead of provide? See How to Use Swan Inference.

For hardware tiers, collateral economics, revenue splits, and slashing rules, see the Provider Onboarding section of the Swan 2.0 overview. This page focuses on the hands-on setup.

0. Check prerequisites

Providers connect outbound to Swan Inference over WebSocket — no public IP, domain, or SSL setup is required. You just need a capable GPU and one of two supported OS/inference-engine stacks:

Platform	Minimum hardware	Inference engine
Linux (NVIDIA)	GPU with ≥ 8 GB VRAM (Tier C); 24 GB+ recommended (Tier A)	SGLang (recommended), vLLM, or Ollama
macOS (Apple Silicon)	M1/M2/M3/M4 with ≥ 16 GB unified memory	Ollama

Legacy GPUs (TESLA P4, GTX 1050 Ti, anything < 8 GB VRAM) cannot serve modern inference workloads and will not receive traffic. Full tier-to-model mapping is in Hardware Tiers.

You'll also need:

• Go 1.22+ to build the computing-provider agent

• Docker 24.0+ with the NVIDIA Container Toolkit (Linux only)

• A funded wallet or credit card for collateral (step 5)

1. Start a model server

Your GPU needs an OpenAI-compatible inference server running locally. Swan Inference will route requests to it via the computing-provider agent.

Linux (NVIDIA) — SGLang

# Download model weights from HuggingFace
computing-provider models download Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct

# Start SGLang serving the model on port 30000
docker run -d --gpus all -p 30000:30000 --ipc=host --name sglang \
  -v ~/.swan/models/Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct:/models \
  lmsysorg/sglang:latest \
  python3 -m sglang.launch_server --model-path /models \
    --host 0.0.0.0 --port 30000 \
    --served-model-name Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct

Verify it's healthy: curl http://localhost:30000/v1/models.

macOS (Apple Silicon) — Ollama

brew install ollama
ollama serve &
ollama pull qwen2.5:7b

Verify it's healthy: curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags.

The quickstart uses Qwen 2.5 7B as an example, but earnings scale with real token traffic. Browse the model catalog to find in-demand models with less provider competition.

2. Install the computing-provider agent

Clone and build from source (mainnet):

git clone https://github.com/swanchain/computing-provider.git
cd computing-provider
make clean && make mainnet && sudo make install

# Verify
computing-provider --version

Full install details including the NVIDIA Container Toolkit setup are in the computing-provider README.

3. Run the setup wizard

The wizard creates your provider account (or logs you into an existing one), auto-discovers your running model server, and writes config.toml and models.json:

computing-provider setup

A typical run looks like this (macOS + Ollama):

============================================================
              Computing Provider Setup Wizard
============================================================


Step 1/5: Checking Prerequisites
------------------------------------------------------------
[ok] Ollama: ollama version is 0.14.1 (running)
[!] Docker: Docker not running. Please start Docker daemon. (optional - Ollama available)
[ok] GPU: Apple Silicon (Apple M1)

Step 2/5: Initializing Configuration
------------------------------------------------------------

Node Name [demo-provider]: demo-provider
Initialized CP repo at '/Users/swanchain/.swan/computing'.
[ok] Configuration initialized

Step 3/5: Authentication
------------------------------------------------------------

A Swan Inference account is needed to connect your provider to the network.
Do you already have a Swan Inference account [y/N]: n

Create a new Swan Inference account
Email: [email protected]
Password:

Creating account...
[ok] Account created!

Set up your provider profile
Provider Name [demo-provider]:

Wallet Address (optional, press Enter to skip):
-> Skipped - you can add a wallet later to start earning rewards

Registering your provider...
[ok] Provider registered!
-> Provider ID: 84bca13d-d056-4826-a1ca-ac4d43597a9c
-> Status: pending (your provider will be reviewed before it can earn rewards)

[!] SAVE THIS API KEY - it connects your machine to Swan Inference and is only shown once.

  API Key: sk-prov-535a****fb47

Step 4/5: Discovering Model Servers
------------------------------------------------------------
[ok] Found ollama at localhost:11434
  * qwen3:8b

Matching with Swan Inference models...
[ok]   qwen3:8b -> Qwen/Qwen3-8B (100%)

Step 5/5: Finalizing Setup
------------------------------------------------------------

Select models to enable:

  1) Qwen/Qwen3-8B - ollama @ http://localhost:11434  ~16GB  (local: qwen3:8b)
Enter selections (e.g., 1,3,4) or press Enter for all [all]:
[ok] Updated config.toml
[ok] Created models.json

============================================================
                      Setup Complete!
============================================================

What to do next:
  * Start your provider:  computing-provider run
  * Monitor in browser:   computing-provider dashboard
  * Check connection:     computing-provider inference status

Save the sk-prov-* key — it's shown once and authenticates this provider to the network.

If you already have a sk-prov-* key (for example, from the web signup at inference.swanchain.io/provider-signup), pass it directly:

computing-provider setup --api-key=sk-prov-xxxxxxxxxxxx

Config files land in ~/.swan/computing/:

• config.toml — WebSocket URL, API key, node name

• models.json — mapping from Swan Inference model IDs to your local endpoints

Consumer keys (sk-swan-*) and provider keys (sk-prov-*) are different. The computing-provider agent only accepts sk-prov-* keys.

Configuration reference

The wizard writes sensible defaults, but if it failed to discover your model server, you run a non-standard port, or you want to serve multiple models, edit these files directly.

Provider config (~/.swan/computing/config.toml)

# ~/.swan/computing/config.toml

[API]
Port = 8085
MultiAddress = "/ip4/<PUBLIC_IP>/tcp/<PORT>"
NodeName = "<YOUR_CP_Node_Name>"

[RPC]
SWAN_CHAIN_RPC = "https://rpc-proxima.swanchain.io"

[Inference]
Enable = true
WebSocketURL = "wss://api-ws-dev.swanchain.io"
ApiKey = "sk-prov-YOUR_API_KEY"
Models = ["Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct"]

Model endpoints (~/.swan/computing/models.json)

{
  "Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct": {
    "endpoint": "http://localhost:30000",
    "gpu_memory": 16000,
    "category": "text-generation"
  },
  "meta-llama/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct": {
    "endpoint": "http://localhost:11434",
    "gpu_memory": 14000,
    "category": "text-generation",
    "local_model": "llama3.2:3b"
  }
}

Field	Required	Description
endpoint	Yes	URL of your local inference server (SGLang, vLLM, Ollama)
gpu_memory	Yes	GPU VRAM used by this model in MB
category	Yes	Model type: text-generation, image, embedding, audio
local_model	No	Local model name if different from the key (e.g., Ollama's qwen2.5:7b)
api_key	No	API key if your model server requires authentication

The keys in models.json must match valid Swan Inference model IDs. Run computing-provider models catalog or check the model catalog for the full list.

The agent watches models.json and hot-reloads on change — no restart needed. You can also force a reload:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8085/api/v1/computing/inference/models/reload

4. Start the provider and pass benchmarks

Run the agent:

nohup computing-provider run >> cp.log 2>&1 &

Then check your status:

computing-provider inference status

You'll move through these stages automatically:

Connect ──▶ Collateral ──▶ Approval ──▶ Active
(instant)   (see step 5)   (< 24 hrs)    (earning)

Stage	What happens	Typical duration
Connect	Agent opens a WebSocket to Swan Inference, registers your models, and auto-runs math / code / latency benchmarks	Instant
Collateral	Deposit via Stripe or on-chain SWAN (step 5)	Instant
Approval	Admin reviews your benchmark results and collateral	< 24 hours
Active	Traffic starts flowing — you earn per-request revenue	Ongoing

The My Provider tab visualizes the activation flow: Start → Connect → Deposit Collateral → Approved → Active & Earning.

5. Deposit collateral

Once approved, deposit collateral to unlock full traffic routing. Two options:

Method	Currency	Processing	Refund
Stripe	Credit/debit card (USD)	Instant	7-day waiting period, back to original card
On-chain	SWAN tokens on Swan Mainnet	Requires SwanETH gas	7-day waiting period, back to your wallet

# Show instructions for your account (deposit address, minimum amount)
computing-provider inference deposit

# Verify deposit was seen on-chain
computing-provider inference deposit --check

Provider dashboard's Collateral Deposit panel — verify your wallet, then pay the required amount via Stripe or on-chain crypto.

Collateral amounts scale with hardware tier and earning multiplier. See Computing Provider Collateral for the full table.

6. Monitor earnings and uptime

The Provider dashboard at inference.swanchain.io/dashboard shows live earnings, request counts, and benchmark history.

Earnings dashboard with live request volume, per-model breakdown, and payout history.

For a local view, the agent ships its own web dashboard:

computing-provider dashboard
# → http://localhost:3005

Set where payouts go:

computing-provider inference set-beneficiary 0xYourWalletAddress

New Provider Grace Period: For the first 7 days after activation, uptime and success-rate deprioritization are waived. Use this window to stabilize your setup before full routing weight kicks in.

Switching or adding models

Edit ~/.swan/computing/models.json — the agent watches this file and hot-reloads without restarting. Start additional model servers on different ports and add them all to the JSON. Full walkthrough with multi-GPU pinning is in the computing-provider README.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
invalid provider API key	Verify key starts with sk-prov- and check ApiKey in ~/.swan/computing/config.toml
WebSocket connection failed	Confirm outbound port 443 is open; URL must be wss:// not http://
Provider online but no requests	Model name mismatch — --served-model-name must exactly match the key in models.json and a model ID in the catalog
could not select device driver "nvidia"	Install the NVIDIA Container Toolkit; see computing-provider README
Stuck in pending	Provider needs collateral + passing benchmark + hardware check. Run computing-provider inference status to see which condition is missing

Full troubleshooting catalog: computing-provider README — FAQ.

Next steps

• Provider Onboarding — hardware tiers, revenue split, slashing rules

• Computing Provider Income — contribution score formula and reward distribution

• Computing Provider Collateral — required amounts and refund process

• Inference Marketplace — how pricing, routing, and settlement work under the hood

Questions? Reach the team on Discord or open an issue on the computing-provider repo.