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Rewards FAQ

1. How much will I earn with N×H100/H200/A100?​

Start with the rewards calculator. Pick your GPU model and count, and you get what GPUs of that model actually earned on Lium per month over the last 30 days — rentals and rented extra — plus idle pay at the validator's rate for every hour not rented, scaled to your count.

Example (measured figures from 10 September 2026, idle rate as of 22 September): 8×H100 rented 55 percent of the time read $5,256 from rentals and $824 rented extra, both measured; idle pay is the validator's H100 rate, $1.49 per GPU-hour (1.494 in the validator's rate table, the figure the calculator multiplies), on the other 45 percent of hours, about $3,926 (1.494 × 730 hours × 45 percent × 8), so about $10,000 a month in all. The measured parts are the average for the model; your own number depends on:

  • Current Lium demand for H100 capacity (drives both your rental utilization and the live gpu_portion for the rented pool — see the Grafana GPU model rate dashboard)
  • Your competitive pricing
  • Whether sysbox is running on your node (mandatory; without it your score is 0 post-cutoff — see the emission docs)
  • The bucket cap dilution for your (GPU model, count) pairing (see the unrented-pool eligibility rules)
  • Validator scoring at the time

The market-wide ones (demand, the going price) are what the calculator measures; the node-level ones (sysbox, your bucket, scoring — and your own price, unless you type it under Advanced) are not in the default result — it shows the measured average for the GPU model, and the full idle rate, which a node earns only while it qualifies (a GPU count in a priced tier, 1 or 8 today, or GPU splitting on; latest executor image; rentals not paused; not on Spot; flagship nodes with GPU splitting). Use it to size the fleet, then read the emission page and Q3 below for what moves your own number; the average itself moves with the market, so revisit it.

2. Why are there two reward streams?​

Subnet 51 combines two independent reward sources:

  1. Rental fees (platform side) — when a renter books your GPU, Lium collects USD and distributes your provider share daily as alpha.
  2. Subnet emission (Bittensor protocol side) — the SN51 subnet mints new alpha tokens every ~72 minutes (one tempo) and distributes them to eligible providers via Yuma Consensus.

The two streams coexist because rental demand is not always saturated. SN51 emission itself is split into three pools (rented, unrented, burn — see Subnet emission): when your GPU is unrented and its model is eligible, you earn from the unrented pool; when your GPU is rented, you earn rental income plus a slice of the rented pool.

See the Rewards index for a diagram showing both streams.

3. Why did I receive less than the calculator predicted?​

Common reasons:

  • Actual utilization fell short — your nodes were rented less of the time than the 30-day average for their GPU model that the calculator uses (a higher price than the model's average usually does this). Lower utilization means lower rental income.
  • Your node did not qualify for idle pay. Hours while the node was paused for new rentals, on an outdated executor image, a flagship node without GPU splitting, or in a GPU count with no priced tier (the priced tiers are 1 and 8 today) without GPU splitting pay $0; the calculator counts every hour not rented at the full rate. A Spot node is paid idle only while a Lium Default Job runs on it, at a rate the calculator does not estimate, and a node that is Spot because of a demotion is paid the same Spot idle pay (see Idle pay on Spot).
  • Sysbox dropped out — sysbox is mandatory. Any window where sysbox-runc was not running on your node zeros that period's score.
  • Live gpu_portion shifted — the rented-pool portion for your GPU model is an EMA of platform-wide rental revenue and moves between epochs. Watch the Grafana GPU model rate dashboard.
  • Cap dilution kicked in — if more unrented GPUs landed in your (model, count) bucket than the per-model cap allows, every node in that bucket is scaled down by cap / unrented_count. See GPU-count tiers and capacity caps.
  • Your GPU count has no priced tier — the unrented pool pays per (model, GPU count) tier, and only some counts are priced (today 1 and 8). A 4-GPU node earns 0 from that pool unless you enable GPU splitting with a minimum count that does have a tier.
  • Misbehavior windows — nodes with SSH failures, crashes, or policy violations forfeit that day's payout. Even one misbehavior incident can reduce your monthly total.
  • Emission allocation shifted — the dynamic split between the unrented pool and the burn pool moved; if rental activity dropped, more emission went to the burn pool (paid to designated burner UIDs only) and less to you.

The calculator shows the measured 30-day average for the GPU model and the idle rate of a node that qualifies, not your node. Your actual earnings are determined by live network conditions and your node's real-time score. Check the Payouts page for details on misbehavior policy.

4. When do I get paid? Can I be paid faster?​

Rental fees are processed daily. You receive that day's alpha with a delay of 2 days. Subnet emission accrues as alpha stake on your hotkey each tempo (~72 minutes), without the rental payout delay.

There is no expedited rental payout path. Once your alpha arrives, you can unstake it to TAO without an unbonding delay. This does not shorten Lium's rental settlement schedule.

5. Why do I have alpha and not TAO? How do I cash out?​

Subnet 51 pays in alpha, a subnet-specific token held as stake rather than free TAO. Rental fees arrive by default as alpha stake controlled by your coldkey after daily settlement; subnet emission increases the stake on your hotkey each tempo.

To get TAO, find your SN51 stake position and unstake it using the coldkey that controls it. Bittensor swaps the alpha for TAO at the current pool price and credits the TAO to that coldkey's free balance; the amount reflects the swap fee and price impact. See Payouts → How to receive as TAO and the Bittensor remove-stake guide.

Ordinary unstaking has no unbonding period: the TAO is spendable as soon as the transaction settles. Lium's rental payout delay applies before the alpha arrives. A conviction lock sets a floor on your coldkey's total SN51 stake: you can unstake down to the locked amount, from any position.

6. What is the burn pool and how big is it?​

The burn pool is dynamic, not a fixed slice. SN51 emission splits into three pools each epoch:

  • Rented pool — 13%. It does not move with network activity, though Lium can retune the figure itself.
  • Unrented + burn — share the remaining 87% ceiling. The split between them is recomputed every epoch by the validator from real rental activity.

When unrented activity is low, most of the 87% ceiling falls into the burn pool — paid to designated burner UIDs. As unrented activity ramps up, the burn pool shrinks toward zero. In mature operation with saturated unrented activity, burn can reach zero and the entire 87% flows to active unrented eligible nodes.

For the full three-pool table, see Subnet emission.

7. How do I increase my score and earn more?​

Today, the score depends on a small set of factors that actually move the needle:

  • Sysbox running (mandatory) — without sysbox-runc on your node, your score is 0. See Sysbox setup.
  • Run an eligible GPU model — only base models with a positive bucket cap earn from the unrented pool. The eligible/ineligible split is tuned over time; use the rewards calculator for the live snapshot.
  • Pick a (model, count) pairing that isn't capped out — if your bucket already has more unrented GPUs than its cap, every node in that bucket is diluted by cap / unrented_count. Watch supply.
  • Turn on GPU splitting on multi-GPU nodes — your minimum split count gives the validator a second GPU-count tier to rate the idle node against. It rescues a node whose GPU count has no priced tier at all, and it lets a node escape its own tier when that tier is over its cap. See GPU splitting.
  • Competitive pricing — set your rental price competitively. Higher utilization shifts you from the unrented pool into rental income + the rented pool. The rented pool's per-model gpu_portion is updated live from rental revenue (visible on the Grafana dashboard), so models that get rented heavily earn more from the rented pool too.
  • Mind your Default Job — running your own Default Job on an idle node forfeits the unrented incentive for that node. Leave the node in Lium Default Job to keep the incentive (Lium runs its own Default Job there instead).
  • No misbehavior — failed verifications and SSH/connectivity incidents zero out your score for the affected day.

To increase your earnings:

  1. Make sure sysbox-runc is installed and running on every node.
  2. Run an eligible GPU model and check whether your (model, count) bucket is already saturated.
  3. Adjust your price to match demand; too high and you won't rent, too low and you leave money on the table.
  4. Use the rewards calculator and the Grafana GPU model rate dashboard to plan against live numbers — the static tables in this doc and in the validator config change over time.

For detailed operational guidance, see the Provider portal documentation (if available) or the Getting started guide.

8. My idle node's rate changed and I didn't change anything. Why?​

Idle pay is split into tiers. A tier is one GPU model at one GPU count, for example 8× B300 or 1× H100. Each tier has a cap, a number of idle GPUs it pays in full. The cap is shared by every provider.

Two things move on their own:

  • Other providers arrived or left. When a tier holds more idle GPUs than its cap, every idle GPU in it earns a smaller share. The share is the cap divided by the idle count. With 48 idle GPUs and a cap of 32, the tier pays 32/48 of its full rate, about two thirds. When those GPUs get rented or go offline, the share grows again.
  • Your node changed tier. If you use GPU splitting, an idle node in a full tier can be rated in your minimum-split tier while it fits in that tier's free capacity. That capacity is shared too, so the node can move one cycle and not the next.

Neither is a penalty. Nothing on your host changed. The node page in the portal shows the tier, its cap, how many GPUs are idle in it now, and the share the tier pays, under Idle Pay Tier. The share is the tier's. Your node can still earn no idle pay for a reason of its own. On a Spot node the Idle Pay Tier line says None. For an old image, hover the Status badge: its one-line reason is the validator's last log line for the node. Other reasons leave the node rentable, for example too little disk, or a flagship without splitting or profiling. For those, open the node's day under Earnings. Its Incentive history lists the reason for each cycle. The same numbers are in the node's Grafana job logs on every scoring run. The full rules are in When your GPU-count tier is full.

The way to stop depending on shared idle capacity is to get the node rented. Price it so that it rents. Rental income and the rented pool are not capped this way.