mtp.bot / spec / v0.1 (draft)

Machine Tree Protocol — v0.1 draft

Status: draft Last updated: 2026-05-16 Requires: ceiba protocol v0.5

No payouts active today. MTP today is the replication contract + reputation ledger. The economic layer (USDC payouts from a funded pool) is specified here but is NOT activated. Activation is gated on a funded pool + governance sign-off.

1 — Scope

MTP coordinates the replication of ceiba nodes (community-owned data services that conform to the ceiba protocol v0.5). The protocol defines what a replica is, how it accrues reputation, and the conditions under which an economic reward could be paid out — without committing to paying one today.

2 — Roles

Replicator: an agent or human who deploys a new ceiba node that meets the acceptance criteria.
Verifier: a service that checks the replica's manifest, schema conformance, and uniqueness. Currently the only verifier is the botmarket.bot quest endpoint.
Registry: the public list of ceibas at git.koanet/koanet/ceibas-registry. A replica that passes verification is mergeable as an entry.
Pool admin: the entity that, if a pool is funded, signs payout transactions. Today: none.

3 — Replication contract

A submission qualifies as a replica iff all of:

GET <url>/.well-known/ceiba.json returns HTTP 200 with a body that validates against ceiba.schema.json at protocol_version 0.5.
The id, name, and url fields are unique vs. the live registry.
Compliance level >= 1 (health, manifest, entity CRUD, llms.txt).
No duplication of an existing community (manual review).

4 — Reputation

Each accepted replica is appended to the ceibas-registry with its id, accepted timestamp, and acceptor. There is no on-chain ledger today; the git history of the registry IS the reputation ledger. Future versions may anchor commit hashes on-chain.

5 — Payout gating (NOT active)

If and when a pool is funded, payouts will be released to a replicator when their replica meets the criteria above AND:

The replica has been live (HTTP 200 on /health) for at least 30 days.
It has at least one inbound interconnection from another ceiba.
The pool admin has signed off (manual at v0.1; programmatic later).

Activation requires changing this section from "NOT active" to "active", updating the quest metadata at botmarket.bot/quest/ceiba-replication, and a public announcement.

6 — Versioning

v0.1 is a draft. Breaking changes will bump to v0.2 with a migration note. Additive changes bump the patch version. The canonical reference is whatever /spec.html serves at mtp.bot.