The five decisions every ASIC hosting agreement is built around, what each clause commits the host to, and where host and customer tend to read it differently.
What does a hosting agreement commit the operator to, beyond a price per kilowatt hour and a start date? Most fleet owners read the number on the cover page and skim the rest, and most of the disputes that follow trace back to a clause nobody read closely because it looked standard. It usually is not.
This is a walk through the document itself, section by section, with the question each clause is trying to answer and the place where operator and customer tend to read it differently.
What the agreement is structured around
Strip the boilerplate and a hosting agreement is built around five decisions: how much capacity you are buying and how it is defined, what you pay for it and how that can change, how long you are committed and how either side gets out, who is liable when something goes wrong, and what happens to your hardware at the end of the term. Everything else in the document supports one of those five.
Read the capacity clause first, because the word does more work than it looks like. A contract should state a figure in kilowatts at the rack or container, at a stated voltage and phase, tied to a specific location. If the number in the schedule is a site total rather than your own allocation, or if it is not tied to a location at all, raise the gap before you sign, not after your machines arrive and there is no room for them.
Price, indexation and what moves during the term
A single rate per kilowatt hour is a summary, not a full answer. Underneath it sit energy, transmission and distribution, taxes and levies, operations and margin; a contract that only states the summary figure is not telling you which of those components can move. Ask directly: which line items are fixed for the term, which are indexed, to what index, and on what notice you find out about a change. An agreement that ties everything to a market price without a cap is not a fixed rate with an asterisk attached, it is a floating rate described as fixed.
Indexation clauses are also where the timing of notice matters as much as the mechanism itself. Learning about an adjustment after the invoice arrives is a different commercial position from seeing it coming with enough notice to plan around it, even where the underlying formula is identical.
Term, exit and termination symmetry
Two clauses sit next to each other in most contracts and should be read as a pair: how long you are committed for, and what either side needs to do to end the relationship early. The trap is a document that binds the customer for a fixed period while leaving the operator free to terminate on short notice. That asymmetry is legal and fairly common, and it is also the kind of thing that only matters on the day you need it to, which is usually the wrong day to discover it.
Read the exit clause with a specific scenario in mind: the operator wants to repurpose the site, or your own circumstances change and you need to move the fleet. What does each side owe the other in that case, in notice and in compensation, and does the answer change depending on who initiated it?
Availability, liability and access to your own hardware
Availability language ranges from a specific, measurable commitment to a general statement of intent, and the difference is usually a single sentence buried in the definitions section. Look for what counts as downtime, whether planned maintenance is excluded from it, and what remedy follows if the commitment is missed. A remedy that only reduces a future invoice is worth less to you than one that compensates for the period the machines sat idle.
Liability and insurance are a related but separate question. The contract should state plainly what the operator is liable for and what is excluded, and separately, who insures the physical hardware and against what. In most agreements the operator is not the insurer of your machines, which is a defensible position as long as it is written down rather than assumed. The same part of the contract, or one near it, should also describe your access to the hardware itself: whether you can request physical access, on what notice, and what remote monitoring you get by default rather than on request. A fleet you cannot see or reach is a fleet you are trusting blind.
Security and collateral belong in the same read-through. Some agreements ask for a deposit or other security from the customer; fewer say anything about what happens to that security, or to your hardware, if the operator's own obligations are the ones that lapse. Ask the question in both directions, not only the one the draft addresses.
Before you sign
None of the above requires a lawyer to start working through, though a lawyer should see the final draft before you sign it. What it requires is reading the document as a list of questions rather than a list of terms, and writing down which questions the draft answers and which it does not. A short set to start with:
- Which capacity figure is in the schedule, and is it your allocation or a site total?
- Which price components are fixed, which are indexed, and on what notice?
- Are the termination notice periods the same length for both sides?
- What counts as downtime, and what remedy follows a missed commitment?
- Who insures the hardware, and what access do you have to it without asking?
If your own draft leaves any of the questions above unanswered, raise them with whoever sent it before it goes any further. Our hosting agreement checklist takes the clauses one at a time, including a separate point on how availability is defined, measured and remedied. Our own terms are set out in the service agreement, which comes with a quote from our hosting rate page.
