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Quickstart: Earn

Share your idle compute with the Teale network and earn Teale Credits. Your device earns credits the moment it's online and earns more when it actually serves requests. Credits redeem AI inference and can be gifted to other users.

How earnings work​

Two things earn credits:

  • Availability. Every second your device is online and reachable, credits tick up at a steady base rate.
  • Serving. When your device actually handles a request, credits accrue faster based on tokens served, model complexity, and quantization.

Credits redeem AI inference on any model in the network and transfer freely to other users. Credits do not cash out to USDC or fiat — see Credit Economy for the full closed-loop model.

Step by step​

1. Install Teale​

If you haven't already, install Teale on your Mac. See Install on Mac or Install the CLI.

2. Enable earning mode​

Via the CLI:

teale up --maximize-earnings

Or in the desktop app: open Settings and toggle Contribute to network.

This tells Teale to optimize for throughput and accept requests from the network.

3. Teale configures itself​

When earning mode is active, Teale:

  • Selects the best model for your hardware (maximizing tokens-per-second for your RAM and GPU).
  • Connects to the Teale network and registers your node as a provider.
  • Starts accepting inference requests from other users.

You do not need to choose a model or configure networking manually.

4. Check your earnings​

teale wallet balance

This shows your current Teale Credits balance and recent transactions.

5. Gift or spend your credits​

Use credits to run AI on larger models through the network, or send them to another user:

teale wallet send <amount> <peerID> --memo "thanks"

Transfers are immutable and irreversible by design — there is no chargeback or reversal flow. Treat sends like cash.

Tips for maximizing earnings​

  • Plug in to AC power. Teale throttles inference on battery to preserve battery health.

  • Use ethernet. Wired connections have lower latency and higher reliability, which means your node gets more requests.

  • Schedule overnight contribution. If you don't want to share compute during the day, schedule earning mode for nights and weekends:

    teale config set schedule.earn "22:00-08:00"

  • More RAM = more earnings. Larger models serve more use cases and earn more per token. A 32 GB Mac can run 70B-class models that are in higher demand.

  • Keep Teale updated. Newer versions include performance improvements and support for newer models.

Monitoring​

Check your node's status and earnings at any time:

teale status              # Node status, model, connections
teale wallet balance      # Current balance and history
teale wallet history      # Detailed transaction log

Next steps​