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Provider referrals

Early access

The program opens in two steps. First, Lium turns it on for a named group of referrers; their links are judged and accrue from that day. Every other provider's link is recorded and kept, and starts earning from the first daily accrual after the group restriction is lifted — billing days before that are not paid. While the program is switched off entirely, no GPU qualifies, nothing accrues and no withdrawal is accepted. The provider portal's code entry and referrals panel are not live yet.

A provider can refer another provider. When the referred provider lists GPUs that have never been on Lium before, the referrer receives a share of the rental billing of those GPUs for 6 months. The referred provider's own rental share is unchanged: the reward comes out of Lium's platform fee, not out of anyone's pay.

The code​

Every provider has one referral code with the PROV- prefix — the same code the renter referral program uses (it is minted the first time the portal asks for it). A new provider gives the code once; a provider is linked to at most one referrer, ever, and cannot use its own code. The code must be given within 72 hours of your anchor — accounts created before this rule shipped count from account creation; newer accounts from their first portal sign-in: a provider who has been in the portal longer cannot be linked to a referrer. Nodes that were already running before that sign-in do not shorten the window; their cards count as new only under the grace rule in What counts as new.

What counts as new​

Lium keeps a registry of every GPU UUID its validator has ever scraped, under whichever provider carried the card first. A GPU on a referred provider's node qualifies when the registry says the card was first seen on that provider's own node, no earlier than the referral link minus a short grace window (24 hours, to cover the case where the portal syncs your nodes before you type the code).

A GPU does not qualify when:

  • Lium saw the UUID before the referral link minus the grace window — on any account, active or not, including the referred provider's own earlier nodes (seen_before), or
  • the UUID was first seen after that but on another provider's node — a card moved in, not brought — or on a node Lium could not tie to a provider account at the time it first saw the card (seen_under_other_provider), or
  • the UUID is not a physical GPU's: a MIG slice (MIG-…) or another string that is not a GPU- UUID (not_physical_gpu), or
  • two or more of the provider's UUIDs, across all of their nodes, differ only in their last two bytes, which no real set of cards does (implausible_uuid_set) — those UUIDs are refused; the provider's other cards are judged as usual. Spreading such a set one card per node does not change the verdict. Every UUID of a usable length Lium scrapes still enters the registry, so a real card next to a fake keeps its first sighting and cannot be re-listed as new later.

Each card is judged once per referral; the decision is final. Moving cards Lium has already seen — your own included — onto an account you referred earns nothing.

What the referrer receives​

For every billing day, for every node of the referred provider with rental billing:

reward = rental billing of the node × (qualifying GPUs ÷ GPUs on the node) × rate
  • Rate: 5%.
  • Rental billing is the gross rental charge of the node for that day — what renters were billed, before Lium's fee — taken from the same rows the referred provider's own payout is computed from. A row declined for a penalty pays nobody. Rentals by the referrer or the referred provider themselves are left out of the billing before the reward is computed.
  • Mixed nodes pay pro rata. A node with 6 qualifying cards out of 8 pays 6/8 of the reward.
  • 6 months per GPU, counted from the first day the card's node bills. A card first billed on 10 September earns through 9 March and not on 10 March. Cards added later start their own window.
  • There is no minimum number of rentals and no activation step.

The rate and the duration are Lium settings, not per-provider terms. Lium may change the rate, the duration, eligibility or payouts, or end the program, at any time (Terms of Service, section 9).

Where the reward goes and how it is paid​

Rewards accumulate in a referral balance on the referrer's provider account — they are not added to the daily rental payout. A reward becomes withdrawable 14 days after its billing day (the review window); the balance shows the withdrawable and the held part separately. An account that holds its own key can withdraw it; a withdrawal takes the whole withdrawable part, in one of two ways:

  • USDT on Ethereum, to an address you give at withdrawal time, through the same transfer service that pays renter referral rewards. The amount is held while the transfer is pending and returns to the balance if the transfer fails.
  • Lium credits, added to the renter account on lium.io that uses the same e-mail address as your provider account: your provider account must have an e-mail set, and the lium.io account with that e-mail must have verified it. This is the only account credits can go to.

An account that signed up with e-mail or Google (not released yet) withdraws by stablecoin payout only, not by Lium credits. Earnings accrue from day one; withdrawals open when stablecoin payouts launch — we'll e-mail you.

Three limits apply:

  • The smallest withdrawal is $50; a smaller withdrawable balance stays and keeps growing.
  • Withdrawals that take one calendar month's total past $2000 are held for a Lium operator to approve; the amount is reserved while it waits, and an operator either sends it or returns it to the balance.
  • While one of your referral links is under review (below), withdrawals are refused — a withdrawal already waiting for an operator is not released either; the balance keeps accruing.

Same-operator review​

A referrer and a referred provider that look like one operator are reviewed, when the code is entered and again while the link is active. A link under review is either flagged or revoked:

  • A flagged link keeps accruing: the referred provider's GPUs are still judged and the reward still accrues, but the referrer cannot withdraw until an operator clears the flag or revokes the link.
  • A revoked link stops accruing. What was accrued stays in the balance; nothing further accrues. Withdrawals stay refused until an operator confirms the revoke.
  • An operator can also flag a link by hand, clear a flag after a review, or revoke a link. The portal shows the status of each of your links, with a short fixed note for a flagged or revoked link; the details of the review stay with Lium.

Attribution and status​

The provider portal records and reads the link on your behalf (the backend routes under /provider-referrals accept only the portal's own sign-in, not a provider API key). Linking happens once: a second code, your own code or an unknown code is refused. The status the portal reads carries your code, the rate and the window, whether your account is earning today (earning_enabled — false while the program is off or, during early access, when your account is not in the named group), your balance, and every referred provider with its qualified and judged GPU counts.

How it ends​

  • A card stops earning at the end of its window.
  • Lium can revoke a referral link (for example when hardware turns out not to be the referred provider's, or after a same-operator review). A revoked link earns nothing from the next daily accrual on — billing days not yet processed at the time of revocation, the day itself included, are not paid; what was already accrued stays in the balance.

Not covered​

Renter referrals — a provider's PROV- code used by a renter — are a separate program paid through subnet emission and not yet documented here.