Bidding

Some sellers sell capacity by competition instead of at a published price. The capacity is put up as a lot with a closing time, and buyers bid against each other until the window shuts. A bid is a stated intention to buy at that price, and a place in the ranking. It is not a payment, it reserves nothing, and no money moves when you place it. Winning produces an introduction: you and the seller are given each other and contract directly, exactly as on the rest of the marketplace.

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Find a lot

• Lots in the dashboard menu (/app/auctions) lists them. The page has three tabs: Market, every lot still taking bids or about to; Bidding on, the lots your company has bid on; Selling, your own lots. The entry sits on both the Buy and the Sell menus, because one company can be selling one lot and bidding on another.
• On Radar, a listing with a lot that has not closed shows BY AUCTION or CURRENT BID where a rate would be, and its button reads Bid Now. The lot may not have opened yet; the lot page says so and lets you accept its terms in the meantime.

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Before you can bid

Three things admit your company to a lot. A bid that is refused says which one is missing and what to do about it. Only an owner, authorized signatory or trader can bid. A viewer can read a lot and not bid on it. Bidding does not ask for your second factor: a bid commits no money. See Team and roles.

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The lot page

Open a lot at /app/auctions/:id. The heading gives the size of the lot, for example “4 nodes at auction”, with a status badge beside it. Standing shows the countdown — Bidding closes in, or Opens in before the window starts — and how many bids the lot has drawn. Whether the leading amount is shown depends on the format. Terms of this lot is the text you accept before bidding.

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Open and sealed lots

The format decides who can see what while the lot is open. It decides nothing else: both formats take the same bids and are decided by the same comparison, and the seller cannot change it once the lot exists. On a sealed lot the page does not hide a number it holds: nothing computes a leading amount before the close, so there is none to show. The smallest bid a sealed lot takes is the published reserve, and it never moves with the bidding — which is what stops the refusals telling you what somebody else bid.

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Accept the terms

Press Accept this lot’s terms (version N.0) on the bid panel. Accepting records the version and a hash of the text you were shown.

• Accepting is what admits your company to bid. It covers only the version named on the button.
• The page cannot show whether you have already accepted, so the control is always available. Pressing it again records the same version and changes nothing.
• If the seller amends the lot, the version moves and every earlier acceptance stops admitting. Accept the new text before bidding again.
• A seller cannot accept their own lot’s terms, and cannot bid on their own lot.

You can accept the terms before the window opens.

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Place a bid

Type the amount and press Place bid. The lot decides at the instant your bid lands, under the server’s clock, and a refusal says what to fix. Your company has at most one live bid on a lot. Placing another replaces it rather than adding to it: the old bid is kept on file as Replaced. A bid cannot be withdrawn on its own; replace it while the window is open. The panel shows your own bid and nobody else’s, with the terms version it was placed against. No other company’s amount is on the page, on either format.

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When the lot closes

The window is judged by the server’s clock and is exclusive at the end: at the closing time it is already over. The lot is then decided:

• The highest bid that clears the reserve wins. Equal amounts are settled by who bid first.
• Reserve not met when bids came in and none reached the seller’s floor.
• No bids when none came in at all.

The Result panel shows the outcome, the clearing price, how many bids were received and when it was decided. Losing bidders see the clearing price — a decided price is a market signal — and never the ranking or any losing amount, including their own. The settlement record cannot be edited or removed.

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If you win

A win produces an introduction, the same record a seller’s Accept and reveal produces. A request is created on your company’s behalf to carry the demand behind the win. It is copied from the listing you bid on — its GPU, region, nodes and term — and appears in Requests with a note saying it came from the auction. You did not type it; it is there because an introduction is always about a stated demand. The seller pays GPU Outlet the 1% success fee on what they receive from you, exactly as on any introduction. You pay GPU Outlet nothing. See Success fee.

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What you are told

Auction notices appear in the dashboard only. They are not emailed, and there is no switch for them in Settings.

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