12 KiB
NIP-90
Data Vending Machine
draft
optional
This NIP defines the interaction between customers and Service Providers for performing on-demand computation.
Money in, data out.
Kinds
This NIP reserves the range 5000-7000
and 36107
for data vending machine use.
Kind | Description |
---|---|
5000-5999 | Job request kinds |
6000-6999 | Job result |
7000 | Job feedback |
36000-36xxx | Addressable job result |
Job results always use a kind number that is 1000
higher than the job request kind. (e.g. request: kind:5001
gets a result: kind:6001
).
Addressable job results always use a kind number that is 31000
higher than the job request kind. (e.g. request: kind:5107
gets a result: kind:36107
).
Job request types are defined separately.
Rationale
Nostr can act as a marketplace for data processing, where users request jobs to be processed in certain ways (e.g., "speech-to-text", "summarization", etc.), but they don't necessarily care about "who" processes the data.
This NIP is not to be confused with a 1:1 marketplace; instead, it describes a flow where a user announces a desired output, willingness to pay, and service providers compete to fulfill the job requirement in the best way possible.
Actors
There are two actors in the workflow described in this NIP:
- Customers (npubs who request a job)
- Service providers (npubs who fulfill jobs)
Job request (kind:5000-5999
)
A request to process data, published by a customer. This event signals that a customer is interested in receiving the result of some kind of compute.
{
"kind": 5xxx, // kind in 5000-5999 range
"content": "",
"tags": [
[ "i", "<data>", "<input-type>", "<relay>", "<marker>" ],
[ "output", "<mime-type>" ],
[ "relays", "wss://..." ],
[ "bid", "<msat-amount>" ],
[ "t", "bitcoin" ]
],
// other fields...
}
All tags are optional.
i
tag: Input data for the job (zero or more inputs)<data>
: The argument for the input<input-type>
: The way this argument should be interpreted. MUST be one of:url
: A URL to be fetched of the data that should be processed.event
: A Nostr event ID.job
: The output of a previous job with the specified event ID. The dermination of which output to build upon is up to the service provider to decide (e.g. waiting for a signaling from the customer, waiting for a payment, etc.)text
:<data>
is the value of the input, no resolution is needed
<relay>
: Ifevent
orjob
input-type, the relay where the event/job was published, otherwise optional or empty string<marker>
: An optional field indicating how this input should be used within the context of the job
output
: Expected output format. Different job requestkind
defines this more precisely.param
: Optional parameters for the job as key (first argument)/value (second argument). Different job requestkind
defines this more precisely. (e.g.[ "param", "lang", "es" ]
)bid
: Customer MAY specify a maximum amount (in millisats) they are willing to payrelays
: List of relays where Service Providers SHOULD publish responses top
: Service Providers the customer is interested in. Other SPs MIGHT still choose to process the job
Encrypted Params
If the user wants to keep the input parameters a secret, they can encrypt the i
and param
tags with the service provider's 'p' tag and add it to the content field. Add a tag encrypted
as tags. Encryption for private tags will use NIP-04 - Encrypted Direct Message encryption, using the user's private and service provider's public key for the shared secret
[
["i", "what is the capital of France? ", "text"],
["param", "model", "LLaMA-2"],
["param", "max_tokens", "512"],
["param", "temperature", "0.5"],
["param", "top-k", "50"],
["param", "top-p", "0.7"],
["param", "frequency_penalty", "1"]
]
This param data will be encrypted and added to the content
field and p
tag should be present
{
"content": "BE2Y4xvS6HIY7TozIgbEl3sAHkdZoXyLRRkZv4fLPh3R7LtviLKAJM5qpkC7D6VtMbgIt4iNcMpLtpo...",
"tags": [
["p", "04f74530a6ede6b24731b976b8e78fb449ea61f40ff10e3d869a3030c4edc91f"],
["encrypted"]
],
// other fields...
}
Job result (kind:6000-6999
)
Service providers publish job results, providing the output of the job result. They should tag the original job request event id as well as the customer's pubkey.
A spontaneous job result does not need to include request
, e
, i
or p
tags.
{
"pubkey": "<service-provider pubkey>",
"content": "<payload>",
"kind": 6xxx,
"tags": [
["request", "<job-request>"],
["e", "<job-request-id>", "<relay-hint>"],
["i", "<input-data>"],
["p", "<customer's-pubkey>"],
["amount", "requested-payment-amount", "<optional-bolt11>"]
],
// other fields...
}
Addressable job result (kind:36107
)
Addressable events can be used for DVM results which contain data that a relay does not necessarily need to store. For example, data from IoT devices can be reasonably high frequency and storing multiple results from the same device per day may not be necessary.
A spontaneous addressable job result does not need to include request
, e
, i
or p
tags.
The d tag can have any value, but using a human-readable string such as "iot-device-123-event-8333" can improve usability.
{
"pubkey": "<service-provider pubkey>",
"content": "<stringified-json-array>",
"kind": 36xxx,
"tags": [
["request", "<job-request>"],
["e", "<job-request-id>", "<relay-hint>"],
["i", "<input-data>"],
["p", "<customer's-pubkey>"],
["amount", "requested-payment-amount", "<optional-bolt11>"]
["d", "<unique-string>"]
],
}
Encrypted Output
If the request has encrypted params, then output should be encrypted and placed in content
field. If the output is encrypted, then avoid including i
tag with input-data as clear text.
Add a tag encrypted to mark the output content as encrypted
{
"pubkey": "<service-provider pubkey>",
"content": "<encrypted payload>",
"kind": 6xxx,
"tags": [
["request", "<job-request>"],
["e", "<job-request-id>", "<relay-hint>"],
["p", "<customer's-pubkey>"],
["amount", "requested-payment-amount", "<optional-bolt11>"],
["encrypted"]
],
// other fields...
}
Job feedback
Service providers can give feedback about a job back to the customer.
{
"kind": 7000,
"content": "<empty-or-payload>",
"tags": [
["status", "<status>", "<extra-info>"],
["amount", "requested-payment-amount", "<bolt11>"],
["e", "<job-request-id>", "<relay-hint>"],
["p", "<customer's-pubkey>"],
],
// other fields...
}
-
content
: Either empty or a job-result (e.g. for partial-result samples) -
amount
tag: as defined in the Job Result section. -
status
tag: Service Providers SHOULD indicate what this feedback status refers to. Job Feedback Status defines status. Extra human-readable information can be added as an extra argument. -
NOTE: If the input params requires input to be encrypted, then
content
field will have encrypted payload withp
tag as key.
Job feedback status
status | description |
---|---|
payment-required |
Service Provider requires payment before continuing. |
processing |
Service Provider is processing the job. |
error |
Service Provider was unable to process the job. |
success |
Service Provider successfully processed the job. |
partial |
Service Provider partially processed the job. The .content might include a sample of the partial results. |
Any job feedback event MIGHT include results in the .content
field, as described in the Job Result section. This is useful for service providers to provide a sample of the results that have been processed so far.
Protocol Flow
- Customer publishes a job request (e.g.
kind:5000
speech-to-text). - Service Providers MAY submit
kind:7000
job-feedback events (e.g.payment-required
,processing
,error
, etc.). - Upon completion, the service provider publishes the result of the job with a
kind:6000
job-result event. - At any point, if there is an
amount
pending to be paid as instructed by the service provider, the user can pay the includedbolt11
or zap the job result event the service provider has sent to the user
Job feedback (kind:7000
) and Job Results (kind:6000-6999
or kind:36000-36999
) events MAY include an amount
tag, this can be interpreted as a suggestion to pay. Service Providers MUST use the payment-required
feedback event to signal that a payment is required and no further actions will be performed until the payment is sent.
Customers can always either pay the included bolt11
invoice or zap the event requesting the payment and service providers should monitor for both if they choose to include a bolt11 invoice.
Notes about the protocol flow
The flow is deliberately ambiguous, allowing vast flexibility for the interaction between customers and service providers so that service providers can model their behavior based on their own decisions/perceptions of risk.
Some service providers might choose to submit a payment-required
as the first reaction before sending a processing
or before delivering results, some might choose to serve partial results for the job (e.g. a sample), send a payment-required
to deliver the rest of the results, and some service providers might choose to assess likelihood of payment based on an npub's past behavior and thus serve the job results before requesting payment for the best possible UX.
It's not up to this NIP to define how individual vending machines should choose to run their business.
Cancellation
A job request might be canceled by publishing a kind:5
delete request event tagging the job request event.
Appendix 1: Job chaining
A Customer MAY request multiple jobs to be processed as a chain, where the output of a job is the input of another job. (e.g. podcast transcription -> summarization of the transcription). This is done by specifying as input an event id of a different job with the job
type.
Service Providers MAY begin processing a subsequent job the moment they see the prior job's result, but they will likely wait for a zap to be published first. This introduces a risk that Service Provider of job #1 might delay publishing the zap event in order to have an advantage. This risk is up to Service Providers to mitigate or to decide whether the service provider of job #1 tends to have good-enough results so as to not wait for an explicit zap to assume the job was accepted.
This gives a higher level of flexibility to service providers (which sophisticated service providers would take anyway).
Appendix 2: Service provider discoverability
Service Providers MAY use NIP-89 announcements to advertise their support for job kinds:
{
"kind": 31990,
"pubkey": "<pubkey>",
"content": "{
\"name\": \"Translating DVM\",
\"about\": \"I'm a DVM specialized in translating Bitcoin content.\"
}",
"tags": [
["k", "5005"], // e.g. translation
["t", "bitcoin"] // e.g. optionally advertises it specializes in bitcoin audio transcription that won't confuse "Drivechains" with "Ridechains"
],
// other fields...
}
Customers can use NIP-89 to see what service providers their follows use.