Grand Network Quickstart (Volunteer Compute)

Grand Network Quickstart

The Vox grand volunteer network lets you share spare GPU compute with trusted peers — and consume theirs — with no central server, no token economy, and no SaaS dependency. Federation is identity-first: signed PublicAttestationManifest files, Gist-hosted, verified by anyone.

Anti-goals

Before you start, note what this is not:

No blockchain, no token.
No automatic data sharing. Discovery publishing is opt-in and off by default.
No transitive trust. Your node only trusts peers you explicitly register.

Prerequisites

Vox CLI installed (vox --version prints a version).
A running vox populi up node (see Populi reference).
A GitHub account (for Gist-based manifest hosting — optional but recommended).

Step 1 — Generate your node identity

When you first run vox populi up, a Mesh Federation Identity (Ed25519 key pair) is generated automatically:

vox populi up --mode lan --public-mesh

Check your public key:

vox populi identity show

Step 2 — Publish your attestation manifest

The attestation manifest announces your node’s capabilities and opt-in status to potential peers. It is a signed JSON document you host yourself.

Preview the manifest without publishing:

vox populi attest publish --dry-run --task-kinds text_infer,image_gen

Publish to a target URL (e.g. a raw Gist URL):

vox populi attest publish \
  --task-kinds text_infer \
  --target-url https://gist.githubusercontent.com/<user>/<gist-id>/raw/vox-manifest.json

Share this URL with peers who want to join your mesh.

Step 3 — Join a peer’s mesh

When a peer shares their invite URL or manifest URL, join them with:

# Direct manifest URL (HTTPS)
vox populi join https://gist.githubusercontent.com/<peer>/<gist-id>/raw/vox-manifest.json

# Invite URL (with optional signature and label)
vox populi join "vox-mesh://invite?manifest=<url>&label=Alice%27s+Node"

Dry-run first to preview:

vox populi join <url> --dry-run

The peer’s manifest URL is saved to ~/.vox/config.toml under mesh.federation_peers.<node-id>.

Step 4 — Verify the peer is registered

vox populi federation list

Step 5 — Enable opt-in discovery publishing (optional)

Discovery publishing lets your node broadcast utilisation telemetry to the Atlas Findings index. It is disabled by default:

[mesh.discovery_publishing]
enabled = false   # change to true to opt in

When enabled and built with --features mesh-discovery-publish, the populi daemon aggregates vox.workflow.* telemetry into ProviderAtlasFinding observations every 5 minutes and publishes them to your attestation URL.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause
`VoxMeshFederationSigningKey not configured`	Run `vox populi up` first to generate the key.
`fetch manifest ... returned 404`	Check the manifest URL is publicly accessible.
`attestation manifest: no --target-url provided`	Pass `--target-url` or use `--dry-run`.