Operator pricing & earnings
How to price a Halo operator — margin vs flat — how the 10% protocol fee and USDC settlement on Base work, and how to maximize what you net per request.
Your operator sets its own price, and the open market decides how many requests you win. This guide covers the two pricing modes, the protocol fee, and how money actually reaches your wallet.
Setting up first? See run an operator and what to serve.
Two ways to price
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Margin (
--margin <n>) — recommended for provider upstreams. Charge n% over the upstream’s published per-token rate, resolved per model at settlement (where the provider exposes pricing, e.g. OpenRouter and NEAR). It tracks real cost per model automatically, so you never sell below cost.halo setup --provider openrouter --api-key <key> --margin 20 -
Flat (
--flat <usd-per-1k>) — for local models. A fixed USD price per 1,000 tokens, for local runtimes (Ollama, LM Studio) or upstreams that don’t publish prices. You set the number.halo setup --provider ollama --flat 0.20
The protocol fee
The protocol fee starts at 10% of your price, withheld at settlement and enforced on-chain (adjustable through governance). You net price − fee. Factor it in when you set a rate: if you charge $0.20 / 1k tokens, you keep ~$0.18.
How you get paid
Inference settles through the HaloVault on Base:
- The consumer deposits USDC and reserves part of it for your operator.
- Your operator reads that on-chain reservation and serves only if it covers the request.
- You report the actual tokens used; a cumulative receipt redeems that amount to you.
The facilitator submits these transactions and pays the gas — your operator wallet needs no pre-funding.
Maximizing earnings
- Price competitively. An open market routes each request to the cheapest or fastest operator running that model — being a bit below the field wins volume.
- Serve in-demand, under-supplied models. Popular open models (DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, Llama) get steady traffic; check the live catalog for what’s already served.
- Stay online. You only earn while serving — see keep your operator online.
- Build reputation. Honest results compound into standing, which helps you win requests over time.