bottube-verify

Open-source verifier for BoTTube on-chain provenance.

Cryptographically prove that any video on bottube.ai is correctly anchored on RustChain — no admin access, no special node, no privileged keys required.

Install

pip install bottube-verify

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/Scottcjn/bottube
cd bottube
pip install .

Use

bottube-verify <video_id>

Example:

$ bottube-verify dHZm0IAkmev
[1/4] Fetching provenance for dHZm0IAkmev from https://bottube.ai...
      pill=verified  chain=rustchain
      tx_hash=4ffd2316acc5154116fef75d4725aacdc95f93e34c0ae10a1087adbde7418e37
      manifest_hash (claimed Merkle root)=4ffae66da1dc47882a860ee27e5745457c57ff3d33f86364fa027bf47cf42244
[2/4] Resolving batch members for the leaf computation...
      own_leaf=461efc14cc38c1e40629cb0ac00dbb2822a89b1d1d04dce06be8754742aafe56
      using public Merkle proof (path length 8, batch size 200)
[3/4] Fetching on-chain R4 for tx 4ffd2316acc5154116...
      on-chain R4=4ffae66da1dc47882a860ee27e5745457c57ff3d33f86364fa027bf47cf42244
[4/4] Verifying...
      Walked Merkle path: 4ffae66da1dc47882a860ee27e5745457c57ff3d33f86364fa027bf47cf42244
      ✓ matches on-chain R4 byte-for-byte
      ✓ inclusion proof valid (no admin access needed)

=== PASS ===
  Inclusion proof (8 hops, batch size 200):
    1. bottube's manifest_hash matches the on-chain R4 register
    2. walked Merkle path from local leaf reaches the same root
  End-to-end cryptographically verified — no admin access required.

What it actually checks

1. Pulls the public provenance JSON from https://bottube.ai/api/videos/<id>/provenance. Reads the canonical SHA-256, the manifest version, uploader signature, uploaded-at timestamp, and the on-chain TX hash. For v2 manifests it also reads thumbnail_sha256 and canonical_360p_sha256.

2. Reconstructs the Merkle leaf locally using the recipe matching the manifest version (see below). The recipe is also documented in the API response — there's no hidden state.

3. Fetches a Merkle inclusion proof from https://bottube.ai/api/videos/<id>/anchor-proof. The proof is just a sequence of sibling hashes — O(log N) bytes, doesn't reveal other videos in the batch.

4. Walks the proof path locally to compute the root, then fetches the on-chain TX from your configured Ergo node and reads register R4. If the walked root matches R4 byte-for-byte, the verifier prints PASS.

The strongest property: anyone with curl + Python can verify any video's chain anchor. No bottube cooperation needed beyond serving public read-only endpoints.

Leaf recipes

| is the literal ASCII pipe byte; uploaded_at is integer seconds. The "bottube/v2" domain separator guarantees a v1 leaf and a v2 leaf can never collide even if every other field is equal.

A batch may mix v1 and v2 rows during the migration window — each row's leaf is computed under its own manifest_version, then combined with Bitcoin-style binary Merkle hashing.

Offline mode (downloaded receipts)

For air-gapped or legal/compliance contexts, every video has a downloadable self-contained receipt:

curl https://bottube.ai/api/videos/<id>/receipt -o receipt.json
bottube-verify --receipt receipt.json

The offline check verifies three internal cryptographic invariants:

1. The Merkle leaf computed from the receipt's leaf_inputs equals manifest.leaf.
2. Walking merkle_proof.path from that leaf reaches merkle_proof.expected_root.
3. expected_root equals chain_anchor.manifest_hash.

A PASS proves the receipt is internally consistent — no tampering occurred between when bottube issued it and when you ran the verifier. A subsequent live check (re-run without --receipt) additionally confirms manifest_hash is present in register R4 of the on-chain TX.

Asset re-hash mode (--check-asset)

The default verification proves "bottube's claimed canonical hash is anchored on chain". --check-asset additionally proves "the bytes bottube serves today still hash to that same value" — closing the moderator-can't-hot-swap-content gap:

bottube-verify <video_id> --check-asset

The verifier streams the canonical asset URL, SHA-256s the bytes locally (capped at --asset-max-mb 2048 by default), and compares to the anchored canonical_sha256. A mismatch fails the verdict, even if the chain anchor itself is intact.

Discovery

The full provenance contract — leaf recipes, endpoints, anchor format, verifier modes — is published machine-readable at:

https://bottube.ai/.well-known/provenance-spec.json

Federation peers and crawlers should pin against the spec_version field there.

Configuration

The Ergo node is a private chain — you can either run your own RustChain node, get tunnel access from the bottube operator, or use --ergo-base against a public-mirror node. Without a chain endpoint the verifier still validates the bottube↔chain seam against the manifest_hash bottube reports, but it can't independently verify the on-chain commitment. That's the difference between PARTIAL and PASS.

How it relates to bottube.ai

Live anchor history: bottube.ai/anchors. Federation spec: bottube.ai/federation. Source for this verifier: github.com/Scottcjn/bottube.

License

MIT.