Core Concepts

Last updated: 2026-06-28

Cortensor concepts start with roles, sessions, proof, privacy, and network layers. These pages give readers the mental model before setup commands, APIs, dashboards, or contracts.

Roles Who participates

Router, miner, oracle, validator, pool, quality oracle, and tooling roles each own a different part of the task lifecycle.

Sessions How work moves

Sessions and queues turn API requests into tasks that can be assigned, precommitted, committed, validated, and returned.

Proof How results are checked

PoI focuses on inference correctness and consistency; PoUW focuses on usefulness, relevance, and quality signals.

Privacy Where payloads live

Private inference combines route policy, allowlists, encryption, off-chain storage, URNs, and session-level access controls.

flowchart TB
  Roles["Network roles"]
  Work["Sessions and task queue"]
  Proof["PoI and PoUW"]
  Privacy["Private inference"]
  Network["Multi-layer network"]

  Roles --> Work
  Work --> Proof
  Work --> Privacy
  Network --> Roles
  Proof --> Network

Concept Map

Concept	What it explains
Network Roles	Router, miner, oracle, validator, pool, quality, and tool roles.
PoI And PoUW	How Cortensor frames correctness, usefulness, reputation, and validation.
Sessions And Task Queue	How work is represented, assigned, precommitted, committed, and validated.
Private Inference	How privacy policy, encryption, ACLs, and off-chain payloads fit together.
Multi-Layer Network	L2/L3/mainnet strategy separated from launch-date planning.

Concept Boundaries

Concept area	Public explanation
Decentralized inference	Router, miner, and session flows coordinate AI work across distributed operators.
Community-powered compute	Network participants contribute execution capacity and validation work.
Proof and validation	Contracts, router routes, validator roles, and product wrappers provide verification paths.
AI marketplace and synthetic data	Long-term roadmap areas that build on the same execution and validation foundation.
Historical role names	Archived materials may use earlier names, while current guides use the active role names.

How Concepts Map To Products

Concept	Product surfaces that use it
Network roles	Router Node, mining dashboard, operator setup guides.
Sessions and task queue	Router completions, delegate/validate/factcheck, private inference.
PoI and PoUW	Validator/oracle workflows, Corgent validation, Bardiel trust tasks.
Private inference	Router v2/v3 payloads, off-chain storage, dedicated sessions, future TEE/storage integrations.
Multi-layer network	Testnet/Mainnet strategy, contract deployments, dashboard network selection.