Docs pages
Hourglass docs
Hourglass is a market for 8×H100 node-weeks: one NVIDIA HGX node with eight H100 SXM 80 GB GPUs, delivered as bare metal for one week, Monday 00:00 UTC to the following Monday. You buy a node-week at a weekly auction and pay for it up front in USDC; the seller posts collateral, delivers the node, and is paid for every hour certified healthy. Hours short beyond the contract's 1% tolerance pay you damages from the seller's collateral.
Everything runs in the app with your own Solana wallet. These docs walk through it role by role.
What you can do
| You want to | Role | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| Lock in an 8×H100 node for a future week | Buyer | Buyers |
| Sell idle node-weeks ahead of time | Seller | Sellers |
| Buy claims now and resell them before delivery | Trader | Traders |
| Advance cash to sellers against prepaid weeks | Lender | Lenders |
| Accredit nodes and run acceptance tests | Inspector | Inspectors |
How a week works
- List. Each region (NA, EU) has one series per delivery week, open two to eight weeks ahead.
- Auction. Every Thursday at 16:00 UTC each open series clears all its orders at one price, quoted in USDC per GPU-hour. Bids are paid in full when placed; asks are backed by the seller's collateral.
- Claims. A filled bid becomes claims, one per node-week. Claims can move between approved wallets until notice.
- Notice. At notice, Friday 00:00 UTC, 72 hours before the week starts, you request delivery and each claim becomes a delivery ticket.
- Handover. You give the seller your SSH key (encrypted in your browser), the seller assigns a node, an inspector tests it, and you confirm access.
- Delivery. For 168 hours, agents on the node sign health records every minute and a committee certifies each hour.
- Settlement. After a 24-hour challenge window the ticket settles: the seller is paid for the certified hours, you are refunded for the rest, plus damages beyond the tolerance.
The weekly auction, delivery week and settlement pages go through each step with the exact deadlines and formulas.
Before you start
- A Solana browser wallet: Phantom, Solflare or Backpack. See Wallets and sign-in.
- USDC on Solana for bids, collateral or advances, and a little SOL for transaction fees.
- An approved wallet. Every participant is approved for the roles they use; see Apply and get approved.
The litepaper is a short read on the whole market; the whitepaper specifies every mechanism, formula and account.