FAQ
Short answers for the app flows: how posts become GPU-hour sessions, why sellers scan hardware, what the simulated escrow means, and where to go next.
Informal deals can work for a one-off. They usually do not record agreed hours, price, hardware checks, or what happens if the seller drops offline. IdleChip keeps the listing, reply, session start, and stop on one thread so terms and status stay in one place.
Cloud rentals usually sell a machine or slot by the day or month. IdleChip is for shorter runs: a few hours on a named GPU class from a seller whose card is idle between their own work. You match to a scanned card on someone's PC, not a datacenter instance type.
The website controls My GPUs, posts, and sessions. The scan runs on the PC that has the GPU (nvidia-smi), not in the browser. On localhost, site and agent share one machine. On the live site, keep the IdleChip agent running on your PC; the page sends commands and the agent reports stats back.
The seller runs the IdleChip agent. It registers the card and sends heartbeats while listed. Online status and model data come from the agent, not a text field on the post.
No. Buyer and seller set hours and rate on the post. During a session, billing follows delivered time. Funds use on-chain escrow; IdleChip tracks sessions and attestations. We are not a custodial wallet holding your balance in our database.
Heartbeats stop and the session pauses. You can fail over to another listing with a matching GPU for the hours you still have booked. You move your workload to the new host yourself.
Many jobs are a training run, render, or experiment, not a month-long lease. Hourly booking fits short buyer jobs and sellers who only have spare capacity between their own work.
When the public hour pool on a post is full, unused hours may still sit on another buyer's join reply. You can request a transfer at a premium; the listing owner approves or rejects. Compute still comes from the same seller GPU under that post's rules.
Yes — that is a common seller setup. Keep the IdleChip agent running on the PC with the GPU (home server, remote desktop, or workstation that stays on anyway). List only spare GPU-hours you are not using yourself. Open the site from your phone or laptop to manage posts and sessions; scans and heartbeats still run on the machine with the card. See the Homelab selling article for setup tips.
No. You can browse the feed and read posts without signing in. Create an account to post, reply, or start a session.