How to become a super-node operator

1 Who keeps search in an agent network

1.1. One owner, one switch

Every search needs a server that never sleeps. Agents on home computers come and go, but somebody has to keep the list of announcements, answer questions at any hour and help agents find each other.

If one company runs that server, two things follow. It decides who is seen and in what order. And when its infrastructure fails, everyone stops together, as happened when one region of a large cloud went down for most of a day in October 2025. In Lagrix search is therefore kept by many super-nodes at once, and there are always at least ten places for them.

1.2. Places that money buys

Many networks solve the first problem by letting anyone with a large deposit run the infrastructure. In one well-known network, a single validator requires a minimum of 32 ETH, and downtime brings penalties. The logic is simple: put money at stake, and you get a seat.

The side effect is simple: whoever has the most money holds the most seats. In Lagrix a place cannot be bought at any price; it goes to people who do real paid work in the network, and here is how.

2 How a super-node place is earned in Lagrix

Web4 is the internet where AI agents act for people: they find each other, agree and pay directly by open rules, and every paid deal leaves a record nobody can rewrite. The person sets the agent's limits, and no stranger reaches the person without their yes.

2.1. The window around the median

Take Leo, a developer whose agent sells his AI hairstyle-matching element to salons. Over the last 12 months his agent did $420 of paid work through the network. Now follow what happens when a super-node place opens. Step one: the contract looks at every node whose agents worked as providers in that time, and finds the median of their paid work. Say it is $400: half the nodes did less, half did more. The median is used instead of the average because a few very large providers pull the average up, while the median stays where most people are.

Step two: only nodes between 0.75 and 1.25 of the median may apply, which here means from $300 to $500. Leo's $420 is inside the window. The biggest earners of the network are outside it on purpose, so that whoever earns the most does not also hold the search. Step three: Leo files one application from his node's wallet. A node marked for proven cheating cannot apply at all.

2.2. A random choice anyone can check

The random choice works like sealed envelopes. With his application Leo publishes a fingerprint of a secret number, a short code that proves the number without showing it. When applications close, every applicant reveals the secret. All the secrets together decide a random order of applicants, with care for diversity of networks and regions, and nobody can know the result before the last secret is revealed. Because the order comes from everyone's secrets together, no applicant and no super-node can steer it.

Suppose Leo comes first. He gets an invitation and 48 hours to start his server and copy, from their other holders, the announcements of the kinds of service it will hold. Agents of ordinary nodes, taken in turn, then check the server, its index included; the existing super-nodes do not judge him, because fewer rivals would suit them. If the server passes, Leo is in. If it is not ready in time or fails, the next applicant in the same order gets the invitation.

3 What a super-node does and what it earns

3.1. The work

Leo's server now does four jobs. It runs a relay, keeps the announcements of the kinds of service it holds and builds result lists by the one open rule. It keeps the index of receipts and reviews. It helps agents behind home routers find a direct path to each other, and passes their encrypted traffic when no direct path exists, which is part of running a node on your own computer. And it never holds anyone's money: payment is settled by the escrow contract.

This needs a real server. The standard profile is 8 virtual processors, 16 GB of memory, a fast 500 GB disk, a 1 Gbps connection and a fixed public address. The bar rises as the network grows, though more slowly, because newcomers take a share of the kinds: an operator warned of a shortfall adds capacity in time or leaves early.

3.2. The pay, and what is never promised

Every deal in the network pays a small fee. The fees of each period, less the developer share of elements received over F2F, are pooled and divided in equal parts among the super-nodes that passed the period's quality minimum; here is where the deal fee goes. On top of that, searches pay $0.01 per result list and delivered messages $0.001, which super-nodes collect in batches; this is the price of one search.

Leo's super-node can also be chosen for a panel of the Official mark. For each application the contract chooses nine super-nodes at random among those that passed the quality minimum, and each opens the applicant's three verified accounts and votes by its own judgment. The $100 application fee is divided equally among those who voted, about $11.11 each when all nine vote, and a super-node that does not vote gets nothing. Here is how an agent gets the Official mark.

How much Leo will receive is not known in advance and is never guaranteed: it depends on the deals that close and on how many super-nodes pass the minimum in that period.

4 How a super-node leaves its place

4.1. Rotation and downtime, without a mark

Places turn over. At regular intervals the super-node that has served longest leaves, but only after its successor has been checked and included, so capacity never dips. In practice each super-node serves about a year, which keeps the door open to people doing paid work now. With ten super-nodes, one of them hands over its place roughly every five weeks.

Downtime is not treated as cheating. If Leo's server goes offline, it simply serves nobody and loses that period's income. If it stays unavailable 30 days in a row, Leo loses the place, without any mark. The same is true if he ignores a warning that his server is too small for the network.

4.2. Proven cheating, with a mark for good

Cheating is a different matter. Dropping packets it promised to pass, building a result list that does not match the open rule, or forging network records can all be proven with signatures and checks that anyone can repeat.

Once a violation is proven, a permanent «proven violation» mark appears on the node's wallet and on all its elements, and the node loses its place and can never hold one again. Whoever proved it is rewarded from the fees, while a false report costs the reporter the amount locked with it. The full rules are in document 5 of the protocol, and the bigger picture is on the page about an AI agent network without a central server.