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Cloud Mining — Mine Engram from Your Phone

Mine on Bittensor subnet 450 from any device. Your phone holds the identity and pays for compute; a managed node on Akash Network does the heavy lifting.

How It Works

Your Phone                      Cloud Gateway              Akash Node
──────────                      ─────────────              ──────────
Generate sr25519 keypair
  (stays on device)

POST /sessions ────────────►   Verify x402 payment
  X-Payment: <USDC receipt>     │
  hotkey: <your pubkey>         │  Dexter facilitator
  tier: standard                │  confirms on-chain tx
  duration_hours: 24            │
                                Deploy miner container
                                to Akash Network ──────►  Docker: miner.py
                                                           Qdrant vector store
                                Wait for provider ◄─────  /health OK
◄──── {                    ◄───
  session_id,
  node_endpoint,
  expires_at
}

Poll /sessions/{id} every 30s:
  vectors, proof_rate, block ◄── gateway fetches from
                                  node /stats

Privacy guarantee: Your sr25519 private key never leaves your phone. It signs gateway auth headers (not Bittensor extrinsics). All on-chain Bittensor operations are handled by the managed node using its own pre-registered hotkey.

Mobile App

The Engram mobile app is a React Native (Expo) app with three screens:

Screen Function
Wallet Generate / manage your sr25519 keypair. View Bittensor subnet 450 stats via raw JSON-RPC (no SDK).
Start Mining Pick compute tier and duration, pay with USDC on Base via Dexter (x402), launch node.
Dashboard Live stats from your active node — vectors stored, proof rate, latency, block. Stop session.

Building the app

cd mobile
cp .env.example .env
# Set EXPO_PUBLIC_GATEWAY_URL to your gateway endpoint

npm install
npx expo start          # dev server
npx expo run:android    # Android
npx expo run:ios        # iOS
eas build --platform android  # production APK

Key design choices

  • sr25519 via WebAssembly (@polkadot/wasm-crypto) — no native crypto compilation on Android
  • Bittensor reads use raw Substrate JSON-RPC HTTP calls — no bittensor SDK on the phone
  • Bittensor writes (register axon, set weights) are handled entirely by the cloud node
  • x402 payment is a pure HTTPS call — no Web3 library needed

Compute Tiers

Tier vCPU RAM Storage Approx price
Lite 1 2 GB 10 GB ~$0.10/hr
Standard 2 4 GB 20 GB ~$0.20/hr
Pro 4 8 GB 40 GB ~$0.36/hr

Prices are approximate — Akash providers bid competitively, so actual cost may be lower. Payment is in USDC on Base (or other x402-supported networks).

Payment — x402 via Dexter Cash

Engram uses the x402 open standard for payment. When you hit "Pay & Start Mining":

  1. App requests session creation from the gateway
  2. Gateway returns HTTP 402 with payment requirements (amount, network, recipient)
  3. App builds and signs an on-chain USDC transfer via Dexter Cash
  4. App resends request with X-Payment: <receipt> header
  5. Gateway verifies receipt with Dexter facilitator
  6. Node is provisioned

No account required. No KYC. Payment settles in seconds on Base.

Running the Cloud Gateway

The gateway is a standalone aiohttp server (neurons/cloud_gateway.py) that the mobile app talks to directly.

Environment variables

Variable Required Description
X402_RECIPIENT_ADDRESS Yes Your USDC wallet address on Base (receives payments)
X402_FACILITATOR_URL Yes Dexter facilitator endpoint (https://x402.dexter.cash)
X402_NETWORK No Payment network (default: base)
CLOUD_PRICE_PER_HOUR_USD No Hourly rate (default: 0.10)
AKASH_OWNER_ADDRESS Yes Akash wallet address that pays for compute
AKASH_NODE_URL No Akash REST API (default: https://api.akash.network)
AKASH_CHAIN_ID No default: akashnet-2
GATEWAY_PORT No HTTP port (default: 9000)
GATEWAY_AUTH_REQUIRED No Set to 0 for dev mode (skips sig verification)

Start the gateway

# Install dependencies
pip install -e .

# Configure
export X402_RECIPIENT_ADDRESS=0xYourUSDCWalletOnBase
export X402_FACILITATOR_URL=https://x402.dexter.cash
export AKASH_OWNER_ADDRESS=akash1yourwalletaddress

# Run
python neurons/cloud_gateway.py --port 9000

Point the mobile app at it

# mobile/.env
EXPO_PUBLIC_GATEWAY_URL=https://your-gateway-domain.com

Running Miners on Akash (operator setup)

The gateway auto-deploys miner containers to Akash when a session is created. To use this:

1. Set up an Akash wallet

# Install Akash CLI
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/akash-network/node/main/install.sh | bash

# Create wallet and fund with AKT
akash keys add engram-operator
akash query bank balances $(akash keys show engram-operator -a)

2. Configure the SDL manifest

The SDL for each session is auto-generated by engram/cloud/akash_sdl.py. The miner Docker image is pulled from GHCR:

ghcr.io/dipraise1/engram:latest

Override with ENGRAM_MINER_IMAGE env var to use a custom image.

3. Fund the operator wallet

Akash deployments require AKT for gas + provider escrow. Recommended: keep at least 10 AKT in the operator wallet. Providers are paid from the deployment escrow automatically.

Security Model

Threat Defence
Phone private key exposure Key stored in device secure enclave (Expo SecureStore) — never sent
Gateway impersonation Every gateway request signed by phone's sr25519 hotkey
Session hijacking Session gated by hotkey — only the controller hotkey can read or stop it
Payment fraud x402 receipt verified on-chain via Dexter facilitator before provisioning
Private memory cross-access Namespace isolation enforced at every miner endpoint (retrieve, list, delete)
Memory tampering Merkle commitment over full corpus — GET /commitment proves integrity

API Reference

Gateway endpoints

GET  /health                       — liveness check
GET  /tiers                        — compute tiers and pricing
GET  /nodes                        — pool availability
GET  /bittensor/metagraph?netuid=N — raw subnet state (no auth, pure JSON-RPC)

POST   /sessions                   — create session (x402 payment required)
GET    /sessions/{id}              — session status + live stats
DELETE /sessions/{id}              — stop session early
GET    /sessions/hotkey/{hk}       — all sessions for a hotkey

Create session

Request:

POST /sessions
X-Hotkey: 5GrwvaEF...
X-Timestamp: 1716000000000
X-Sig: <sr25519 sig of "engram-cloud:POST:/sessions:{timestamp}">
X-Payment: <base64-encoded x402 receipt>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "tier": "standard",
  "duration_hours": 24
}

Response (202 Accepted):

{
  "session_id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
  "status": "provisioning",
  "expires_at": 1716086400.0,
  "remaining_seconds": 86400,
  "amount_paid_usd": 2.4
}

Get session

GET /sessions/a1b2c3d4-...
X-Hotkey: 5GrwvaEF...
X-Timestamp: 1716000000000
X-Sig: <sig>
{
  "session_id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
  "status": "active",
  "node_endpoint": "https://provider.akash.host:32001",
  "remaining_seconds": 82341,
  "stats": {
    "vectors": 1842,
    "proof_rate": 0.9983,
    "p50_latency_ms": 43.2,
    "queries_today": 287,
    "block": 3841920
  }
}