---
sidebar_position: 7
title: Provider referrals
description: Refer a provider whose GPUs are new to Lium and receive a share of those GPUs' rental billing for a fixed window per GPU.
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.lium.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Provider referrals

:::note Not released
This program is implemented behind a feature flag that is off (lium-platform#329 and lium-platform#330, not released). Until Lium turns it on, no GPU qualifies, nothing accrues and no withdrawal is accepted; a referral link recorded before the switch is kept. The provider portal's code entry and referrals panel are a follow-up on the same ticket and are not live either.
:::

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 programme 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.

## 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`).

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.
- **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.

## 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. The balance can be withdrawn at any time, whole, 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.

## 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). 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 programme paid through subnet emission and not yet documented here.