# Become a provider

A provider sells inference. You decide which models you serve, what you charge, and what infrastructure you use to serve them. Soma handles registration, payment, and discovery.

## The path

1. **Register your provider record.** One transaction; binds your wallet address to a public HTTPS endpoint that buyers' proxies will hit.

    ```sh
    soma provider register --endpoint https://my-inference.example.com
    ```

2. **Publish an offering for each model you sell.** Prices are in micro-USDC per 1000 tokens. The `--model-id` must be one of the canonical IDs in the protocol's [ModelRegistry](https://docs.soma.org/reference/cli/) — list them with `soma model list`.

    ```sh
    soma offering register \
        --model-id anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 \
        --prompt-micros-per-1k 1000 \
        --completion-micros-per-1k 5000
    ```

3. **Run the daemon.** It accepts OpenAI-compatible requests at your endpoint, verifies each one carries a valid voucher, forwards to your upstream (your own GPUs, OpenRouter, Anthropic — anything), streams responses back, and stores vouchers.

    ```sh
    soma start provider --config provider.toml
    ```

    Config schema is in `soma start provider --help`.

4. **Withdraw earnings.** Voucher settlement happens automatically while the daemon runs. To move USDC back to Base:

    ```sh
    soma bridge withdraw --amount <USDC> --recipient <ETH_ADDR> --target-chain base-sepolia
    ```

## What you don't have to do

- **Stake.** Providers don't stake anything. Staking is for validators.
- **Run a validator.** Independent role. Most providers won't.
- **Prove availability.** There's no on-chain liveness oracle. If your endpoint is down, the proxy routes elsewhere; your rating drops over time and traffic falls. That's the incentive.