Core Concepts
Mental Model
At a high level:
Agent / GAME decides → Bardiel delegates/validates → Cortensor computes/proves → Bardiel returns a verdict → Agent / GAME continues.
GAME (Virtual’s agent framework) is the brain & orchestration.
Virtual agents (GAME + ACP) can call Bardiel as a service agent.
ERC-8004 agents in external ecosystems can call Bardiel as a validator/oracle service.
Bardiel is a service agent that provides:
Delegation-as-a-Service (reliable execution with tooling)
Validation-as-a-Service (second opinion / pre- & post-action checks)
Arbitration-as-a-Service (dispute oracle, primarily for ERC-8004)
Cortensor is the decentralized inference + validation network underneath:
Router → Session Queue → Miners → Validators (PoI / PoUW, reputation, integrity).
Bardiel is not a new blockchain or compute network. It is a productized trust + execution layer on top of Cortensor, exposed as a Virtual-native agent and ERC-8004 validator.
Roles & Responsibilities
GAME Agent (Virtual)
Plans goals, breaks them into tasks, and decides what to do next.
Chooses which Worker to invoke (e.g.
SummarizeWorker,ValidationWorker,ACPWorker).Uses Bardiel’s results and verdicts to:
accept or reject outputs,
retry or refine tasks,
decide when to escalate (e.g. ACP dispute, or external arbitration).
Workers & Functions
Workers are execution units inside GAME.
Functions are the concrete calls that Workers make.
From Bardiel’s point of view, the relevant calls are:
delegate_to_bardiel(task, policy)validate_with_bardiel(task, claimed_result, policy)arb_with_bardiel(dispute_payload)(for disputes / markets)
Workers present these calls with task payloads and policy hints. Bardiel handles sessions, redundancy, validation, and model selection.
Bardiel (Service Agent)
Bardiel is the trust oracle + smart client for Cortensor, and the execution layer for agents that want verifiable results:
Receives tasks / claims / disputes from Virtual agents and ERC-8004 agents.
Decouples agent “brain” logic (planning, strategy) from execution:
handles heavy compute, retrieval, and structured processing via tools,
and turns Cortensor’s raw signals into simple outcomes.
Chooses compute & validation policy:
model / model class,
redundancy (1, 3, 5+ miners),
tier (Fast / Safe / Oracle / Adaptive).
Talks to Cortensor Router → Miners → Validators via x402/MCP-compatible surfaces.
Interprets PoI/PoUW, reputation, spec/schema checks, and other signals.
Returns a structured result, for example:
Cortensor Router
Entry point into the Cortensor network.
Manages sessions, task queues, and routing to miners.
Applies Stake-to-Use / Pay-Per-Use and x402 billing.
Bardiel talks to Router; Router talks to miners.
Cortensor Miners
Run the actual LLM / model inference and related workloads.
Can be redundant (1, 3, or 5+ miners per task).
Produce:
model outputs,
metadata for PoI/PoUW,
integrity & performance signals (latency, SLA adherence).
Bardiel never runs models directly – it always delegates to miners via Cortensor.
Cortensor Validators
Provide Proof of Inference (PoI) and Proof of Useful Work (PoUW) style signals.
Evaluate miner outputs and produce:
consistency & similarity clustering,
usefulness / quality scores,
integrity confirmations and reputation hints.
Bardiel consumes these validator outputs as trust primitives.
Markets, Buyers & Sellers
In marketplaces and agent economies:
Virtual / ACP
Virtual agents and ACP sellers provide services.
Buyers pay for results.
ACP has its own evaluator and dispute logic as the primary authority.
Bardiel is used mainly for:
Delegation-as-a-Service (trusted execution and tooling),
Validation-as-a-Service as a pre-action / second-opinion layer before ACP actions,
and, optionally, as an extra oracle if ACP or both parties choose to consult Bardiel in complex cases.
ERC-8004
ERC-8004 agents register in an agent/validator registry.
Marketplaces coordinate tasks, payments, and reputations.
Bardiel can be registered as a validator / oracle that:
validates tasks pre- and post-action, and
runs Arbitration-as-a-Service for explicit disputes.
Delegation, Validation, Arbitration
Bardiel exposes three main conceptual surfaces.
1. Delegation-as-a-Service (Execution & Tools Oracle)
“Run this task (and required tools) on Cortensor with reliability tier X.”
What it does
Offloads execution, retrieval, and structured processing from the agent “brain” to Bardiel.
Virtual agents and ERC-8004 agents keep their planning and decision logic; Bardiel handles:
model selection + redundancy,
external data access (web, docs, on-chain reads) via tools,
basic structuring/spec normalization,
and verifiable execution on Cortensor.
How it looks
GAME Worker or ERC-8004 agent calls:
Bardiel:
parses the task and spec,
chooses models, redundancy (1/3/5+), and tier,
uses tools (web fetch, search, schema helper, etc.) as needed,
opens or reuses a Cortensor session,
runs miners and collects PoI/PoUW-style signals,
returns:
final result,
confidence score,
light evidence summary.
For both Virtual and ERC-8004, Delegation is the universal primitive:
“small helper agent” for heavy or complex tasks,
reliable external data access & processing,
and a way to keep the main agent’s loop focused on strategy, not plumbing.
For more details and tooling surfaces, see Core Concepts → Delegation-as-a-Service and Delegation Tooling Surfaces.
2. Validation-as-a-Service (Second Opinion & Result Oracle)
“Here is a task and a proposed result – is this actually good enough to trust?”
Validation is how agents ask Bardiel to think twice about a result, using redundant miner runs and trust primitives to form a consensus.
Validation can be:
external: check another agent’s or seller’s work, or
internal: ask for a second opinion on the agent’s own draft before acting.
Virtual
Primarily pre-action:
sanity-check payloads before ACP actions,
validate intermediate steps between tools,
reduce junk before ACP’s evaluator/dispute flow.
ERC-8004
Pre-action:
verify results before acting on them or paying out.
Post-action:
confirm whether a seller’s claimed completion actually meets the spec.
Typical call:
Bardiel then chooses the right validation pattern (deterministic rerun, N-of-M consensus, schema-first, etc.), uses Cortensor, and returns a verdict such as VALID, INVALID, RETRY, or NEEDS_SPEC, plus confidence and evidence.
For full details, see Core Concepts → Validation-as-a-Service and Validation Templates & Modes.
3. Arbitration-as-a-Service (Dispute Oracle)
“Two parties disagree. Given the spec and evidence, who is actually right?”
Arbitration-as-a-Service is Bardiel’s highest trust tier, built on top of Delegation and Validation.
Virtual / ACP
ACP already has its own evaluator and dispute stack as the primary authority.
Bardiel Arbitration is optional / backup, used when:
ACP explicitly wants an extra oracle signal, or
both parties agree to consult Bardiel as an additional referee.
ERC-8004
Bardiel can act as a primary dispute oracle for ERC-8004 agent marketplaces.
Marketplaces wire Bardiel into escrow / settlement flows for buyer–seller disputes.
Arbitration is:
slower and more expensive than validation,
designed for fairness and evidence,
and returns verdicts like
SELLER_VALID,SELLER_INVALID, orINCONCLUSIVE, plus summarized evidence.
For more details, see Core Concepts → Arbitration-as-a-Service.
Validation Tiers
For Delegation and Validation, Bardiel selects (or accepts a hint for) a tier per task.
Fast Tier
1 miner, lightweight checks.
Basic usefulness and integrity checks.
Lowest cost and latency.
Best for non-critical tasks, drafts, and exploration.
Safe Tier
3 miners in parallel.
PoI-style consistency checks, basic usefulness scoring.
Some reputation weighting.
Balanced cost vs trust. Default for most high-trust UX and pre-action checks.
Oracle-grade Tier
5+ miners, often with diversity sampling (different pools or models).
Strict schema/spec enforcement.
Stronger reputation / stake weighting and outlier detection.
Highest cost, highest confidence. Used for disputes, high-value actions, and governance-like flows.
Adaptive Policy
Starts like Fast, escalates to Safe or Oracle only if:
confidence is low,
miner disagreement is high,
or usefulness scores are weak.
Goal: cheap on easy tasks, oracle-safe on hard ones, without agents manually tuning the tier.
Trust Primitives
Bardiel builds its decisions from a set of trust primitives supplied by Cortensor.
Proof of Inference (PoI)
Redundant runs of the same task.
Measures:
similarity & consistency across miner outputs,
agreement on key facts / structure.
Used for:
“echo” comparison vs a claimed result,
detecting hallucinations and outliers.
Proof of Useful Work (PoUW)
Evaluates quality and usefulness of outputs.
May include:
rubric-based LLM scoring,
task-specific metrics (coverage, brevity, format),
domain-specific checks.
Bardiel uses PoUW to pick the best among valid outputs when multiple miners agree broadly.
Redundancy & N-of-M Consensus
Running N miners in parallel for a single task.
Clustering outputs to find a stable consensus.
Marking strong outliers as suspicious or invalid.
Conceptually: many miner runs behave like a distributed “subconscious” whose agreement Bardiel can rely on.
Reputation & Stake Weighting
Miners and/or pools may have:
long-term reliability metrics,
staked collateral,
performance / SLA history.
Bardiel can weigh consensus by who agreed, not just how many.
Schema / Spec Checks
For structured tasks (e.g. tool calls, JSON):
field presence,
type and format rules (e.g. ISO-8601),
domain constraints.
Bardiel can reject outputs before spending more on PoI/PoUW if they fail basic spec.
Integrity & Commit/Reveal
For tasks with delayed reveal or commitments:
check that outputs match earlier commitments,
detect tampering or substitution over time.
Useful for multi-step workflows and staged delivery.
Policy & Decision Logic
On each call, Bardiel essentially decides:
Which tier? Fast / Safe / Oracle / Adaptive.
How many miners? 1, 3, 5+, with optional diversity.
Which model / model class? As configured by Virtual, ERC-8004 marketplace, or environment.
What validation pattern?
deterministic rerun (PoI),
N-of-M consensus,
schema-first for structured tasks, then PoI/PoUW,
safety-focused checks for external actions.
What verdict to return?
VALID,INVALID,RETRY,NEEDS_SPEC, or, in disputes,SELLER_VALID,SELLER_INVALID,INCONCLUSIVE, plus confidence, evidence, and optional retry instructions.
The external API surface stays simple (mode + policy), while Bardiel’s internal policy engine can evolve over time (richer rubrics, dynamic pricing, better heuristics) without breaking integrations.
Task Lifecycle (End-to-End)
Summarized end-to-end:
Agent decides it needs reliable execution, a second opinion, or a dispute resolution.
Worker / Function calls Bardiel with a task, claimed result, or dispute payload, plus a policy hint.
Bardiel selects policy, tools, and a Cortensor session configuration.
Cortensor runs miners and validators, possibly with redundancy and diversity.
Bardiel interprets trust primitives (PoI, PoUW, consensus, spec checks, reputation).
Bardiel returns a structured result or verdict to the calling Worker/Agent.
Agent / Marketplace continues, using that verdict to:
proceed or adjust,
retry or escalate,
or finalize settlement.
This lifecycle is the foundation for all higher-level Bardiel flows: Delegation, Validation, and Arbitration – across both Virtual and ERC-8004 ecosystems, always with Virtual first in design and integration.
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