Ambient's network economics have a defined shape but no committed numbers.
The reward design, qualitatively#
The incentive design rests on work credit:
- Rewards follow validated useful work. Nodes earn credit, called LStake ("logit stake"), for contributions of valid proofs of work: inference, fine-tuning, and training, tracked over the short term (days) and medium term (months). LStake is a measured contribution, not a locked token bond.
- Leader election is work-weighted. Leaders are elected based on a weighted average of their short- and medium-term validated proofs of work, and nodes are rewarded for contributions to the logit pool, successful leader terms, and participation in finality voting.
- Penalties are retrospective work-credit slashing. Ongoing validation can detect invalid work after the fact and slash the offender's accumulated work credit. The design does not rely on slashing a locked token stake.
- Pricing is set by auction. Users and agents declare a price and a latency target; miners bid to serve it, each posting a deposit that is returned on on-time completion and forfeited if they miss.
The intent is proof-of-work economics: miner rewards that favor active contribution over incumbency, so new compute always has a reason to join.
Keep reading#
- Proof of Logits explains where work credit comes from.
- Network architecture covers the auction that prices requests.