Question 1

What is the Compute Price Index (CPI)?

Accepted Answer

The Compute Price Index is a public reference price for AI inference. It tracks the cost of one Standard Compute Unit (SCU) across major AI providers — one representative per model family, each weighted equally. The index is free to read, published on-chain on Base when reconstituted, and independently verifiable.

Question 2

What is a Standard Compute Unit (SCU)?

Accepted Answer

One SCU is the USD cost of a fixed reference workload evaluated across the basket as the equal-weight geometric mean of every model-family representative's blended cost — no tiers, no provider weights, no outlier caps. The Nth-root damping of the geometric mean plus the one-family-one-slot rule provide gaming resistance by math. Every published revision permanently carries the methodology version that produced it, recorded on-chain on Base for independent verification. The active methodology and reference workload token counts are published via the API at /v1/oracle/methodology and /v1/oracle/scu, and every /v1/oracle/* response carries the X-Methodology-Version header.

Question 3

How is the CPI updated?

Accepted Answer

The CPI refreshes when the basket is reconstituted — either because basket composition changed or because a provider updated its rate card. Model prices are read from the OracleRegistry contract on Base, converted to USD via the Treasury peg, combined into the SCU using the methodology formula, and published via the public API. The dashboard reads directly from the API.

Question 4

Is there a token or a marketplace?

Accepted Answer

The public oracle API covers read-only pricing data. $COMPUTE (ERC-20 on Base), inference routing, and marketplace operations exist but are auth-gated and not part of the public API surface. The CPI is public data; points on the site are non-transferable in V1 and have no monetary value.

Question 5

How do I query the SCU from an application?

Accepted Answer

Fetch https://api.compute.finance/v1/oracle/scu — returns JSON with the current SCU, the fixed reference workload (input and output token counts), the active methodology version, and updatedAt. No authentication is required. SCU history is at /v1/oracle/history (with from, to, and granularity={per-revision|daily|weekly} parameters; Accept: text/csv returns CSV); per-model price history is at /v1/oracle/models/{key}/price-history with the same parameters; the full basket is at /v1/oracle/basket, and the methodology changelog is at /v1/oracle/methodology.

Question 6

Can I verify published values independently?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every confirmed revision is recorded on-chain in the OracleRegistry contract on Base. Read functions such as getLatestRevision, getRevision, getRevisionScuUsd, getBaseline, and getComputeIndexAt are callable without trusting the Compute Finance API. Per-model prices live in the off-chain manifest fetched by metadataHash and are independently verifiable via JCS+keccak256. Contract address and verification instructions: https://oracle.compute.finance/llms-full.txt#on-chain-verification

Question 7

How do I use Compute Finance from an AI agent or LLM client?

Accepted Answer

Install the official Compute Finance MCP server: `npx @compute-finance/mcp`. Stdio transport, no API key required. Works in any MCP client — Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code. Read-only tools cover oracle data (basket, price, SCU, CPI, methodology, reconstitutions), cost estimation, and session cost reports. Source: https://github.com/compute-finance/mcp · Server card: https://compute.finance/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json