Payments & payouts

How providers earn credits now, and how USDC-on-Base payout ships at public beta.

Every request that reaches your Mac produces credits. Credits accumulate on the billing ledger at 90% provider share. USDC-on-Base payout is not live in pre-beta. It ships when Malibu enters public beta. Until then, balances are visible in the app; they do not leave the ledger as USDC.

What you earn per request

For every billed request the coordinator computes:

grossCredits    = ((promptTokens × promptRate) + (completionTokens × completionRate))
                  × globalMultiplier
                  ÷ (1M × 1M)

providerCredits = grossCredits × providerShareBps ÷ 10,000

operatorCredits = grossCredits − providerCredits

Default rate card:

Token type	Rate
Prompt	500,000 credits per 1M tokens
Completion	1,000,000 credits per 1M tokens

Default provider share: 0.90 (90%). The operator can override this globally or per-model. Canonical today-vs-launch split: Economics. Both grossCredits and providerCredits use banker’s rounding — ties round to the nearest even quotient, eliminating systematic bias across large volumes of small requests.

Worked example

1,000 prompt tokens + 500 completion tokens at default rates and 90% provider share:

promptNumerator     = 1000 × 500,000   = 500,000,000
completionNumerator = 500 × 1,000,000  = 500,000,000
baseNumerator       = 1,000,000,000
grossCredits        = 1,000 credits (exact)
providerCredits     = 1,000 × 9,000 ÷ 10,000 = 900 credits (exact)

When you get paid

Today (pre-beta): credits accrue. No USDC leaves the ledger.
At public beta: USDC on Base, weekly sweep (Monday 00:00 UTC design), minimum payout threshold 500,000 credits. See Network overview → Metering & billing.
Below the threshold, credits roll to the next window.

Settlement-capable traffic and the receipt deadline

For settlement-capable traffic (v0.3+ signed receipts), a provider receipt must arrive before the coordinator’s pending_deadline_seconds window closes. Receipts arriving after the deadline are non-settling and non-recoverable — they cannot create provider credit, payout readiness, or a new buyer debit. Missing, malformed, or unverifiable receipts settle as FaultBreakerQualifying with zero provider credits. Details: Operations → Verified model settlement.

Checking your balance

Balance, per-model breakdown, and last payout are visible in the Malibu app. The underlying endpoint:

GET /providers/{provider_id}/earnings
Authorization: Bearer <provider_token>

Response shape:

{
  "provider_id":            "<string>",
  "total_credits":          <int64>,
  "current_window_credits": <int64>,
  "last_payout_ready": {
    "window_start_utc": "<RFC3339>",
    "window_end_utc":   "<RFC3339>",
    "provider_credits": <int64>,
    "status":           "<string>"
  },
  "provider_share_bps":  <int64>,
  "models_served":       ["<string>", ...],
  "fault_count":         <int64>
}

Rate limit: 60 requests per minute per provider. Optional day-range filter: ?from=YYYY-MM-DD&to=YYYY-MM-DD (max 31 days).

Provisional vs pinned

Newly installed providers join at the provisional tier — lower routing weight, capped pool size. The operator promotes providers to pinned after observed pool stability, uptime, and review. Pinned providers get higher routing priority. Self-serve promotion is on the roadmap.

Why your Mac might drop mid-window

Lid-close sleep drops the WebSocket. caffeinate prevents display and user-idle sleep during a run but not lid-close sleep. The binary reconnects automatically on wake; in-flight requests during the sleep are lost.
Heartbeat reaping. If no frame arrives within 90 seconds (default pool.heartbeat_miss_threshold_s) the coordinator closes the connection. Streaming inference chunks count as heartbeat activity.
Warmup gate. After reconnect the coordinator holds the provider in a warmup state for up to 90 seconds while verifying it can handle requests. Requests during warmup route to other pool members.

Buyer-facing docs state this plainly: “provider availability can change as Macs sleep, wake, or disconnect from the network.” Availability is best-effort — the mechanisms above are what that sentence describes.

Litepaper

Getting started

Buyers

Providers

Network & trust

Guides index

Ledger

Payments & payouts

Payments & payouts

What you earn per request

Worked example

When you get paid

Settlement-capable traffic and the receipt deadline

Checking your balance

Provisional vs pinned

Why your Mac might drop mid-window

​Payments & payouts

​What you earn per request

​Worked example

​When you get paid

​Settlement-capable traffic and the receipt deadline

​Checking your balance

​Provisional vs pinned

​Why your Mac might drop mid-window

Payments & payouts

What you earn per request

Worked example

When you get paid

Settlement-capable traffic and the receipt deadline

Checking your balance

Provisional vs pinned

Why your Mac might drop mid-window