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Running a node: what it can touch

A c0mpute node runs work for strangers on your machine. That deserves a plain answer to "what am I trusting?", so here it is. If anything below is wrong, open an issue; this page is meant to be checkable against the code.

What the installer does

curl -fsSL https://c0mpute.com/install.sh | sh (source: scripts/install.sh):

  • Downloads the c0mpute, infernet and coinpay release binaries and verifies each one's minisign signature against the public key in minisign.pub before installing it. A missing or bad signature aborts the install. Without minisign installed, it downloads a pinned minisign build (checked by sha256) to do the check; on Intel Macs, which upstream does not build for, it asks you to brew install minisign first.
  • Installs everything under your home directory: binaries in ~/.c0mpute/bin, data in ~/.local/share/c0mpute (or a bigger volume it symlinks, unless NO_STORAGE_RELOCATE=1).
  • Starts the worker as your user, not root: a systemd user service (~/.config/systemd/user/c0mpute-worker.service), with systemd lingering so it starts at boot. Without systemd it runs as a background daemon.
  • Uses sudo only if it is already configured, and only for conveniences: a /usr/local/bin symlink and a /etc/profile.d PATH hook, plus the system service if you ask for one with --system-service. It never runs the worker as root. Skip all of it by running the installer without sudo.

What the worker runs

  • Jobs are the workload types your node advertises (c0mpute worker status lists them): inference through Infernet, FFmpeg transcodes, storage shards, LoRA training, speech, music and image generation. They are run by the installed, signed binaries; a buyer sends data and parameters, not code to execute. Container workloads (video, game servers) start only pinned, well-known images, and only when Docker or Podman already works on the box.
  • Jobs run as child processes of the worker with CPU-thread and GPU limits. This is not a sandbox. A job runs with your user's permissions, so a bug in a workload runtime could read files your user can read. If that is not acceptable for your main machine, run the node in a VM, a container or on a spare box. It earns the same there.
  • The node keeps itself up to date (C0MPUTE_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 turns that off). From v0.2.91 on, updates are verified against the same minisign key before the binary is swapped; a node on an older version checks only the sha256 until it is on v0.2.91 or later.
  • c0mpute plugin install still runs the plugin's own install script without a signature check. Only install plugins you trust.

Models it serves

  • House models (on by default): the models Infernet lists at infernetprotocol.com/house-models.json that fit your RAM and leave 10% of the disk free. Turn them off with infernet house-models off, or --no-house-models at install.
  • Uncensored house models are off unless you opt in (--uncensored-models at install, or infernet house-models uncensored on).

Content policy (images and video)

Every image and video job passes a child-safety guard on the gateway that auctions it and again on your worker before it runs: sexual or nudity terms combined with any minor indicator are refused, always, with no setting to turn it off. Without adult mode your worker also refuses explicit prompts, adds NSFW terms to the negative prompt, and checks every output with a small CPU NSFW classifier (AdamCodd/vit-base-nsfw-detector, Apache-2.0, int8 ONNX pinned by SHA-256, installed under ~/.local/share/c0mpute/nsfw); an explicit output is discarded and the job fails with a policy reason.

Every node serves adult jobs; there is no per-node switch. Since v0.3.38 every worker takes adult (18+) image and video jobs and advertises c0mpute:adult. Jobs are end-to-end encrypted between buyer and worker. The child-safety guard runs on every job and cannot be turned off.

A gateway accepts adult requests only with [adult] buyer = true (or C0MPUTE_ADULT_BUYER=1) and awards them only to nodes whose own capability ad carries that tag. Adult jobs are text only (no image inputs) and requests that point at a real, identifiable person are refused; that check is a word-list heuristic, documented in node/crates/c0mpute-core/src/content_policy.rs. Refusals are counted by reason (GET /v1/policy on a gateway) and logged with a hashed requester id, never the prompt.

Network

Outbound connections only; no port forwarding needed. Some workloads make outbound HTTP requests on a buyer's behalf from your IP (crawl.fetch, workflow.step http calls). Those are limited to public addresses, capped in size and time, and are listed in c0mpute worker status like every other workload. The node joins the libp2p mesh and advertises its capabilities, benchmark score and (if you set them) a nickname and referral handle, which appear on the public node board.

Money: what pays today

  • Paid inference through Infernet pays out via CoinPay to the address you set with infernet payout set <coin> <address>.
  • Hosting and ads settlement through CoinPay is built (PRs #162, #163, #166) but off by default while it is tested.
  • Storage payouts (CIP-006) are not paying yet.

The network is small and paid demand is early. Expect small, irregular earnings for now, and budget for the electricity and wear your hardware takes.

Removing it

systemctl --user disable --now c0mpute-worker   # or: c0mpute worker stop
rm -rf ~/.c0mpute ~/.local/share/c0mpute ~/.config/systemd/user/c0mpute-worker.service
loginctl disable-linger "$USER"                 # if nothing else of yours needs it

With a system service, also run sudo systemctl disable --now c0mpute-worker && sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/c0mpute-worker.service. Remove Infernet with infernet uninstall.