Simple Compute Market Public Release

Simple Compute Market Series: Part 1 of 6

Historical release context — May 29, 2026 component release

This post describes the market-cli-v0.5.3 component release and its publication-time framing. Current main is later and is covered by the repository's root MIT license; the component tag predates that root license. Neither the release nor current source proves an Arkhai-hosted market or live supply. See Arkhai Compute and current SCM source for current boundaries.

Key Takeaways

• The Simple Compute Market (SCM) public open-beta code release is available for evaluation
• Buyers, sellers, and indexers get a machine-readable path through discovery, negotiation, escrow-backed commitments, provisioning, lease state, and settlement
• CLI-based with configured operator registries and no single mandatory matching broker; access can still be operator-gated
• Settlement runs through Alkahest escrow, and the release provisions KVM VMs with SSH credential handoff and optional GPU passthrough
• The release had no SCM-native token; current main is covered by the root MIT license, and current Arkhai SCM fee boundaries are documented separately below

The Simple Compute Market (SCM) public open-beta code release is available for evaluation.

SCM software implements infrastructure for agent-driven compute markets. Buyer software can discover across configured registries, negotiate scalar price under policy, lock escrow, receive seller-operated access, and settle without a human driving every step.

The release connected a bounded, machine-readable compute agreement to an onchain settlement commitment; it did not implement arbitrary-term exchange.

Most marketplace software assumes a human buyer, a human seller, and a platform in the middle of every decision. SCM starts from the opposite assumption. The next compute buyer is software with a workload, a budget, a deadline, and a policy.

We started with compute because it is the resource agents reach for first. The public open-beta code release gives buyers, sellers, and indexers a machine-readable path through the compute-market loop: discovery, negotiation, escrow-backed commitments, provisioning, lease state, and settlement.

SCM is CLI-based for buyers and sellers. Indexers run operator-configured registry APIs that sellers publish to and buyers query. SCM does not require a single mandatory matching broker, but deployments can still have registry operators, access policies, governance, and optional services.

The release had no SCM-native token. SCM's current main source is covered by the repository's later root MIT license; the May 29 component tag predates that license. Arkhai currently charges no SCM platform fee, while sellers, infrastructure providers, networks, settlement rails, operators, and services can still impose costs. Zero protocol fees are intended direction, not guaranteed economics. Registry access may be open or gated under an operator's policy.

What Launched

The public open-beta code release includes the basic roles and runtime surface for an agent-driven compute market:

• Buyers run market to discover listings, negotiate with seller storefronts, lock escrow, receive access, and track lease state.
• Sellers run market-storefront to publish listings, negotiate under their own policies, set accepted settlement assets, and manage delivery.
• Indexers run the listings registry / indexer API that supports discovery and coordination.
• Policies run through market-policy, which supports rule-based and custom policies, including reinforcement learning pricing strategies.

Signing provenance is Ethereum-native in this release. Participants authenticate with wallet signatures, which identifies the signing publisher but does not verify legal identity, KYB, service quality, or capacity. The identity layer is pluggable, so operators can separately integrate another scheme. ERC-8004-compatible identities are possible as an external extension, but they are not core SCM support.

Negotiation is buyer-driven and policy-mediated. Buyers send signed HTTP requests to seller storefronts. Seller policies can quote, counter, accept, or walk away. In the current VM flow, rounds vary scalar price while resource, duration, provisioning, and non-amount escrow terms remain fixed or validated.

Settlement runs through Alkahest escrow. SCM examples center ERC-20 flows today, while Alkahest can settle ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155, native-token, and bundled-token obligations. That leaves room for futures and other derivatives to settle onchain through the same broader settlement path.

The public open-beta code release provisions KVM virtual machines with SSH credential handoff and a full lease lifecycle, with optional GPU passthrough. Other resource adapters require separate implementation and confirmation. vm, container, and bare_metal appear as metadata / filter vocabulary, not claimed delivery adapters.

Deployments can also choose optional private reachability through a ZeroTier overlay or an FRP (Fast Reverse Proxy) tunnel for remote SSH access.

Why Compositional Game Theory

SCM is inspired by Compositional Game Theory (CGT), without following CGT formalisms strictly.

The reason is composability. Signed endpoints, CLI commands, registry records, and negotiation middleware can be wired into larger market behavior. That decomposition gives learning agents a clean action surface: buyers aggregate listings, sellers respond through policies, indexers support discovery, and each side can change policy chains without changing the rest of the market.

SCM does not claim formal strategy-proofness, equilibrium guarantees, or strict CGT implementation. It uses CGT as a pattern language for building markets out of smaller pieces that agents and operators can reason over.

What You Can Build

A few of the things teams can build on SCM today:

• A marketplace layer for a compute network. A network with aggregated compute supply but no market machinery can use SCM as its open market layer: providers run market-storefront, buyer agents run market, indexers support discovery, and Alkahest provides enforceable commitments.
• Idle or surplus compute monetization. A datacenter, cloud provider, or GPU operator can list capacity through a storefront under a pricing policy it controls. Surplus held under a reservation or over-provisioned cluster becomes a normal market activity rather than a workaround.
• Agent-driven procurement. An autonomous system or other buyer agent can run market to discover, negotiate, commit, and consume compute. The flow is machine-readable, and its settlement commitment is onchain; this does not make every offchain listing, availability assertion, or delivery fact independently verified.
• Custom pricing and negotiation strategies. Both sides can drive negotiation through pluggable policies: rule-based, fully custom, or reinforcement learning strategies.

Who It Is For

• Registry and market operators that want open infrastructure for discovery, negotiation, and settlement without a single imposed platform model.
• Compute sellers and resource operators that want control over seller-originated listings and rates, negotiation policy, infrastructure, provisioning, and delivery within an operator-configured settlement environment.
• Compute buyers and agent developers wiring agents to procure compute programmatically.
• Indexer operators that want to run the listings registry / indexer API for the market.
• L1/L2 ecosystems and agent tooling ecosystems looking for concrete agent-commerce infrastructure.

What To Try

• Browse the code
• Run the buyer quickstart
• Stand up a storefront and list capacity
• Write a negotiation policy through market-policy
• Scope adapter, deployment, or integration needs

The public open-beta code release is market infrastructure, not a hosted compute catalog operated by Arkhai. Source and release evidence do not establish any live listing, available capacity, or participating provider; the current website fails closed without an approved source and labels any availability as seller-asserted.

Evaluate the Release

Providers, buyers, and indexer operators can evaluate the release through the role quickstarts.

• Explore Arkhai Compute
• Explore the code
• Request a Market
• Alkahest
• Compositional Game Theory docs
• Compositional Game Theory GitHub
• Whitepaper