How It Works
Your App
Any OpenAI-compatible client sends a request
arbstr routes
Scores complexity, reads live market rates, matches policy, picks the cheapest qualified provider
Provider responds
Inference runs on the optimal node (local, cloud, or mesh)
Bitcoin settles
Actual cost settled in sats via Lightning/Cashu — no tokens, no subscriptions
Features
A production-minded routing engine, not a demo. Every request is scored, priced, and settled.
OpenAI-compatible proxy
Drop-in replacement for /v1/chat/completions and /v1/models. Point any OpenAI client at it — unknown fields like tools and response_format pass through unchanged.
Multi-provider cost routing
Same models, different prices. arbstr ranks every qualified provider by blended cost and routes to the cheapest — free when your local GPU can handle it.
Live market feed
Optional tokenstats integration polls live multi-source quotes — OpenRouter, Routstr, and more — applying per-model sats/1M rates so routing always tracks the real market.
Complexity-aware tiering
A heuristic scorer sends simple prompts to local/free nodes and hard ones to frontier providers, with automatic tier escalation when a provider trips.
Bitcoin settlement
Optional vault treasury reserves, settles, and releases sats per request over Lightning and Cashu — fault-tolerant with pending-settlement reconciliation.
Circuit breakers
Per-provider Closed / Open / Half-Open breakers with automatic recovery probing route around failing providers before they hurt you.
Streaming observability
SSE token extraction, trailing cost events, and post-stream database updates give you real cost and latency on every streamed response.
Cost & analytics API
Query aggregate stats by model, provider, or tier and page through the full request log — with time-range filtering built in.
Bring any provider
mesh-llm, Ollama, Routstr, OpenRouter, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Set auto_discover and models populate themselves at startup.
The Manifesto
No tokens. No staking. No governance theater. Just sats.
Every other AI marketplace invents a token. We use bitcoin — the money that already works. arbstr settles inference costs in satoshis over Lightning. Providers get paid. Buyers pay fair price. No middleman token skimming value.
Get Started
Run your own inference marketplace in under a minute.
git clone https://github.com/johnzilla/arbstr-node && cd arbstr-node
cp .env.example .env # edit with your secrets
docker compose upcurl http://localhost:8080/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer your-agent-token" \
-d '{"model": "gpt-4o", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]}'See the full documentation on GitHub.