Inspectors

Inspectors make the physical side of the market checkable. They accredit sellers' nodes, test each node before its delivery week, and probe nodes when a fault is contested. Their reports are signed with their own wallets and recorded on chain by hash.

You need an inspection contract with Hourglass, a wallet approved for the inspector role (Apply) and one of the three committee seats: the programs accept accreditations, acceptances, probes and cure acceptances only from a current committee member. The Inspector screen in the app holds your work queue.

Before your first report, post your USDC bond from the Inspector screen. The bond is held by the program in your name; accreditations, acceptances and probes all require it. The launch minimum is 10,000 USDC.

To take the bond back, choose Request withdrawal. Your inspections stop at that moment. The whole bond, with the rent of its accounts, can be withdrawn with Withdraw bond once every report you signed is past its challenge window plus 72 hours, and never sooner than 72 hours after the request. For an accreditation that window runs to the end of the node's 90-day accreditation plus 24 hours, so a bond comes back about 94 days after your last accreditation.

Sellers submit nodes with their region, eight GPU UUIDs and health endpoint. For each submission in your queue:

1. Run the burn-in on the node: 16 to 24 hours, dcgmi diag -r 4 with zero failures, zero uncorrectable ECC errors, NVLink bandwidth within 5% of the reference figure. Check that the GPUs' UUIDs match the submission.
2. Upload your burn-in report on the submission. The app hashes it in your browser; only the hash goes on chain. Keep the report.
3. Mark Tier A if the node passed NVIDIA attestation in a confidential-computing configuration.
4. Sign Accredit node.

An accreditation lasts 90 days. You may not accredit nodes of your own seller wallet.

Every delivery ticket is tested before its week, in the window from 24 hours before delivery start to 4 hours after it. The roughly 30-minute test checks that:

• the node's GPU UUIDs match the accredited record;
• a short DCGM diagnostic passes;
• NVLink bandwidth meets the reference.

Record the result with its report hash: passed opens the buyer's two-hour confirmation window; failed sends the seller to a replacement node. An acceptance after a buyer's access objection must come from a different inspector than the one being objected to.

When a seller contests a buyer's fault, an inspector probes the node through the Delivery Agent's fixed health endpoint, /.well-known/hourglass/health?nonce=…. The agent signs a fresh health report against your challenge; it never exposes workload data. Record the outcome:

A dispute still open 72 hours after filing goes to arbitration under the participant agreement; two of the three committee members record the award on chain.

When a seller cures a fault by proposing a replacement node, an inspector tests the replacement as for an acceptance before the 4-hour cure deadline. It appears under Replacement nodes on the Inspector screen; choose Accept replacement with your report's hash. The replacement becomes the ticket's node and the fault bond returns to the buyer. You can't accept a replacement on a ticket where you are the buyer or the seller, nor after an access objection to your own acceptance.

Inspectors hold the seats of the three-member committee that signs the hourly evidence commitments and each ticket's delivery certificate; two of three signatures are required. The Inspector screen lists the committee work as it happens: each hourly commitment and certificate, its payload hash and how many signatures it has. The service's worker signs with the committee keys it holds; a seat moves to an inspector through the administrator's set_committee, and that inspector then signs each payload from committee.payload with its own key.