Dedicated Ephemeral Node Setup

Overview

A Dedicated Ephemeral Node allows a user to directly assign their own miner (inference node) to a session they have created. This setup is ideal for private use cases or testing, where task routing bypasses automatic node selection logic.

This mechanism is similar to regular ephemeral miners but introduces manual pairing of node and session by the user.

⚠️ Note: No authentication is enforced yet. Access control and auth mechanisms will be introduced in upcoming updates.

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Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have followed the general installation instructions:

📖 Installation and Setup Guide

This includes:

• Installing cortensord

• IPFS setup

• Environment configuration

• Docker installation

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Key Differences from Standard Miner Setup

Component	Regular Miner	Dedicated Ephemeral Node
Startup Command	minerv4 or default	minerv4
Session Assignment	Automatically selected via router & reputation logic	Manually assigned to session you control
Authorization	Session, Session Queue & Session Auth	N/A (auth coming soon)

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How to Start

1. Update .env File Ensure your environment file is configured with the correct values, especially:

   CONTRACT_ADDRESS_RUNTIME=<runtime_contract_address>
   
   ...
   
   # Dedicated Node Configuration
   #-----------------------------------------------------------
   # Set to 1 to run as a dedicated node (instead of ephemeral)
   ENABLE_DEDICATED_NODE=1
   # Comma-separated list of session IDs this node is authorized to serve
   # Example: "0,1,2,3,4,5"
   DEDICATED_NODE_AUTHORIZED_SESSIONS="<your_session_id>"

   1. Replace <your_session_id> with the ID of the session you want to dedicate this node to (e.g., the session ID shown in the dashboard).

2. Start as Dedicated Ephemeral Miner Use the following startup command:

   cortensord ~/.cortensor/.env minerv4 1 docker

3. Use the "Dedicated Nodes" interface to input your node’s address (i.e., the address your miner is registered with).

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Use Case

Dedicated Ephemeral Nodes are useful when:

• You want complete control over which node handles your inference.

• You’re testing or debugging inference performance privately.

• You’re building custom integrations with known node-session bindings.

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What’s Next

• Authentication & validation will be added soon to prevent misuse.