Terza Inference
NETWORK

Run a validator

The Terza validator is an independent process. It needs no access to Terza’s database or to any miner’s credentials: it reads a signed public directory, probes offers through the gateway as an ordinary paying customer, and sets weights on chain.

What you need

  • A Bittensor hotkey registered on the subnet with a validator permit (the top 64 validators by stake hold one).
  • A Terza Inference account and API key funded for probes. Probes are real, paid requests at miners’ quoted prices.
  • The gateway’s public signing key, pinned in your configuration. Get it from https://terza.si/api/public/gateway-identity and verify it out of band.

How it gathers evidence

  1. Directory. GET /api/public/validator-directory returns a payload signed by the gateway: every eligible offer’s hotkey, model, quotes, declared capabilities and 24-hour traffic statistics. No miner addresses or credentials. Your validator verifies the signature byte for byte and rejects directories older than five minutes or for another subnet.
  2. Probes. Each round (every one to two minutes) sends three short exact-answer tasks to each text offer, pinned with X-Terza-Offer. To the miner they are indistinguishable from customer traffic.
  3. Hard tasks. About 40 harder tasks per offer per day, at random times, check the model is what it claims to be (see Scoring).
  4. Media. About six paid media tasks per offer per day, using the cheapest settings the offer itself declares.
  5. Chain. UIDs and registrations are read directly from the chain, never from the gateway.

Gateway-side refusals (for example your own balance running out) are recorded as inconclusive and never count against a miner.

Submitting weights

  • Weights are submitted with commit-reveal: committed in one epoch and revealed in the next.
  • Before each submission the validator re-checks your permit, the weights version, the rate limit, UID assignments and the minimum number of weights.
  • Only the dedicated validator hotkey is unlocked; the coldkey never is. A submission whose outcome is unknown is never resent automatically.
  • Keep the validator running: a validator that has not set weights for 5,000 blocks (about 17 hours) stops counting, and miners lose incentive.

Budget

Probe spend is bounded to about $1 of quoted cost per round. Text probes cost fractions of a cent; media probes cost what the media offer quotes (for example a few cents per short video).