Frequently Asked Questions

Short answers for clients, verifiers, crawlers, and AI agents.

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Last reviewed · 67 questions across 14 categories.

What is Verified Reality?

What is Verified Reality?

Verified Reality is tamper-evident reality capture infrastructure. It helps clients and verifiers create Truth Packets — hardware-bound media records that prove a real person captured real media in a real place at a real time. The platform combines field verification, cryptographic sealing, a chain-of-custody ledger, and an integrated licensing exchange.

What is a Truth Packet?

A Truth Packet is a cryptographic evidence bundle that pairs the captured media with device telemetry, operator context, location data, EXIF and C2PA credentials where supported, content hashes, and a continuous chain-of-custody record. The bundle is sealed at the moment of capture and registered in the platform ledger so any later modification is detectable.

Who is Verified Reality for?

Five primary audiences: clients commissioning field audits, independent Certified Reality Verifiers, journalists and newsrooms running bounty-funded investigations, creators protecting human-origin work, and licensing buyers (including ethical AI data buyers) sourcing verified media from the Exchange.

Where is Verified Reality headquartered?

Verified Reality is built and operated by Bizbio Inc., headquartered in London, Ontario. The first active Command Centre covers southwestern Ontario; additional regional command centres come online as the network expands.

For clients

How does a client commission a verification?

Clients submit a request through /quote with target location, scope, and deadline. The system either dispatches an existing Certified Reality Verifier in that area or posts the work as a client-funded bounty. The output is a Truth Packet delivered into the client portal with full chain-of-custody, ready for legal, insurance, audit, or licensing use.

Who owns the IP on a client-funded verification?

The commissioning client owns the IP by default on client-funded work. If the client opts eligible media into commercial licensing through the Exchange, the default revenue split is owner 80% and HQ 20% (configurable via HQ Settings — the cap table is written at mint time and settles from that stored split). The field verifier is paid as a subcontractor on client-funded missions and does not receive backend royalties on client-owned IP.

Can a client keep a verification private?

Yes. Private and evidentiary missions are not listed on the Exchange. The Truth Packet sits inside the client portal and can be exported for custody, legal, insurance, audit, or internal-business use without ever becoming a public asset.

Can a client request a verifier in a specific city?

Yes — the dispatch system targets verifiers by location and competency. If no Certified Reality Verifier is currently active near the requested site, the mission is posted as a bounty so verifiers in adjacent regions can claim and travel, or a Lead Investigator can dispatch a Second Unit verifier to that geography.

What kinds of missions do clients commission most often?

Property and asset verification, insurance claim documentation, milestone-draw construction inspections, civic-liability and slip-and-fall scene records, real-estate condition reports, intellectual-property asset genesis, and investigative or journalistic field captures.

For verifiers

How do verifiers earn?

Verifiers earn from field missions, optional Exchange licensing royalties on HQ-funded internal bounties, Pro subscription pass-through on referred clients, and the affiliate network. Client-funded missions pay a configured Independent Contractor fee on completion. HQ-funded internal bounties pay a field stipend up front (Advance Against Royalties) plus a backend licensing royalty share on future Exchange sales of the captured media. L1 and L2 affiliate commissions accrue on completed mission gross when you recruited the field verifier — funded from the platform waterfall, not from the verifier's mission fee.

How do I register as an Independent Verifier?

Register your agency at /register/verifier. You complete an Independent Contractor Agreement, accept the VRA Forensic Standards (Mission Terms + Truth Protocol), accept the Verified Reality App End User License Agreement (Mobile EULA), upload a dossier photo, and finish Stripe Connect onboarding so payouts can flow. Once active you receive missions on the Verifier Radar in your area (Android field app required at launch).

Are verifiers Independent Contractors?

Yes. In Canada this means CRA IC classification (1099/T4A in the US). Verifiers control their own schedule, choose which missions to claim, and use their own hardware. GST/HST registration is required for Canadian verifiers above the federal small-supplier threshold.

What hardware do I need to be a verifier?

A modern smartphone with sensor support for the active hardware-interrogation handshake (gyroscope, accelerometer, GPS, camera). The Verified Reality mobile app pre-flights your device on first run and tells you exactly which sensors are required for the missions you can accept.

What is the difference between client-funded and HQ-funded missions?

Client-funded missions pay a subcontractor fee — the IP belongs to the client and the verifier has no backend royalty on Exchange sales. HQ-funded internal bounties (newsroom, civic, intel) pay a field stipend as an Advance Against Royalties and mint a cap table that typically gives the capturing verifier about 50% of future Exchange licensing gross (HQ Settings: Internal Bounty Royalty %), with HQ holding the remainder. Both flow through the same dispatch and Truth Packet pipeline.

What is the verifier affiliate network?

When you recruit another verifier with your referral code, you can earn Level 1 (direct) and Level 2 (indirect) Network Growth Commissions on their completed paid missions — a percentage of mission gross paid via Stripe Connect at settlement. Default rates are configured in HQ Settings (typically about 5% L1 and 5% L2). These commissions apply to mission payouts, not to Exchange licensing royalties on Truth Packets. If a recruit has no recruiter in the chain, unallocated affiliate shares revert to HQ.

What is Solo-Mode?

Solo-Mode is when a verifier captures without an external client or HQ bounty — acting as both the field operator and the commissioning client for that session. Under the Independent Contractor Agreement they still hold a Logic Annuity stake in eligible media, and client-side terms from the Client MSA apply to that transaction. Licensing and storage choices follow the same cap-table and custody rules as other client-origin captures.

Where can verifiers work today?

The first active Command Centre is London, Ontario, covering southwestern Ontario. The verifier network is rolling out region by region; additional Command Centres come online as regional managers are appointed. Verifiers anywhere can register early and be activated when their region opens.

Trust and forensics

How does Verified Reality detect fake or manipulated media?

The protocol records evidence at the moment of capture, not after upload. Active device interrogation, telemetry continuity, PRNU camera fingerprinting, cryptographic hashes, EXIF + C2PA provenance, and chain-of-custody metadata are all sealed together. A finished upload from a render farm or generative model cannot reproduce that capture signature.

What is PRNU and why does it matter?

PRNU (Photo Response Non-Uniformity) is the unique sensor fingerprint left by a specific camera's silicon — every physical sensor produces a slightly different pattern of pixel response. Verified Reality binds Truth Packets to the verifier's actual sensor, so the file is provably tied to a real piece of hardware, not a model output.

What is C2PA and how does Verified Reality use it?

C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) is an open standard for binding cryptographically-signed provenance into media files. Verified Reality's Double-Locked Box pipeline attaches C2PA credentials to sealed captures on supported device paths so C2PA-aware viewers can read provenance independently of our infrastructure.

Can a Truth Packet be re-verified without Verified Reality the company?

Yes — that is the design goal for the cryptographic core. The session seal, content hashes, embedded EXIF, and C2PA material can be checked locally with the Verified Reality Auditor desktop app against the bytes on disk. For Arweave-stamped Truth Packets, encrypted Sovereign Decryption Kits carry an Arweave transaction ID; the Auditor hash-matches the local ZIP against the Zip-SHA256 tag on the immutable permaweb transaction — no web app or Supabase database required. Full independent re-verification depends on which custody tier was chosen and whether public anchors were enabled for that packet.

What is active hardware interrogation?

Instead of trusting a finished upload, Verified Reality challenges the device during capture. The app issues live sensor probes (gyro, accelerometer, GPS, optical handshake) that a render farm or deepfake pipeline cannot satisfy in real time. The capture either completes the handshake — proving a real device, in real motion, in a real place — or it does not seal.

What stops someone from sealing a deepfake into a Truth Packet?

The active interrogation step. A deepfake exists as a finished file; the protocol seals the live sensor stream off the device, not a file that was handed to it. Synthetic media cannot satisfy the real-time hardware handshake, and any attempt to spoof the capture pipeline trips the protocol's tamper checks and is grounds for an immediate verifier ban.

Where is the cryptographic chain anchored?

Every sealed Truth Packet is registered in the platform chain-of-custody ledger (Postgres) with content hashes and custody metadata. Captured media is stored on S3-compatible object storage (Cloudflare R2 in production): a hot ingestion tier, an optional Forever Vault tier for eligible Pro or bounty missions, and optional cold archive. Arweave permaweb anchoring is an explicit opt-in when the mission or client enables it — not automatic for every packet. Together these tiers let auditors re-check integrity with or without live access to Verified Reality servers.

Hardware and capture

Does Verified Reality work on iPhone and Android?

Clients can use Verified Reality from any device — the web platform works on iPhone, Android, desktop, and tablet for booking missions, reviewing Truth Packets, and managing licensing. The Verified Reality verifier mobile app, which performs the on-device capture handshake, currently runs on recent Android handsets only; an iPhone build is not yet available. On first run the verifier app pre-flights your device's sensors and storage to confirm it can complete the capture-time handshake required for the missions you can claim.

Does verification work offline?

Yes. The capture seal is computed on-device, so a verifier can complete a mission in a basement, a tunnel, or a no-signal area. The packet uploads and reconciles against the ledger when the device returns to connectivity. The seal itself is cryptographically committed before any network round-trip.

Do verifiers need special cameras?

No special hardware is required for most missions — a modern smartphone is enough. Specialty captures (drone footage, body-worn, 360°, specialised forensic rigs) are supported when the mission scope calls for them, with sensor compatibility confirmed before the mission is assigned.

Verified Reality Auditor

What is the Verified Reality Auditor?

The Verified Reality Auditor is the desktop verification console for Truth Packets. It opens a sealed Truth Packet and runs deterministic cryptographic and structural checks across eight pillars (Sacred Seal, Golden Thread, C2PA, storage, etc.). It also accepts a Verified Reality audit PDF, a single sealed media file, or an encrypted Arweave kit — the same console runs the right verification pass for each input. Public binaries are coming; the canonical landing page is verifiedreality.ca/technology/auditor.

What can you drop into the Verified Reality Auditor?

Four input modes: (1) a full Truth Packet ZIP vault — runs all eight pillars; (2) a Verified Reality audit PDF — hash-matched against the Command Centre registry to prove the report has not been altered; (3) a single sealed media file captured through the Verified Reality verifier app — embedded EXIF and capture metadata are read straight from the file bytes; (4) an encrypted Arweave kit — inspected for structural integrity without forcing full decryption.

Can the Auditor verify a Verified Reality audit PDF?

Yes. Drop the PDF into the Auditor and it hashes the file and confirms the hash matches the one on record at the Command Centre. If a single byte has shifted since publication, the check fails. The PDF / registry path drives a focused subset of the pillars (storage and the Forensic Audit attestation); the rest are muted as not applicable for that input.

Can the Auditor read a single media file outside its Truth Packet?

Yes — for media captured through the Verified Reality verifier app. Drop a single .jpg, .mp4, or other supported file and the Auditor reads its embedded immutable core: EXIF, capture telemetry, PRNU reference, and any paired C2PA sidecar. It is the right tool for ad-hoc inspection of a single frame without unpacking the parent Truth Packet.

Can the Auditor open an encrypted Arweave kit without full decryption?

Yes. Download an encrypted Sovereign Decryption Kit from Arweave and drop it into the Auditor. With credentials supplied, it decrypts locally, hashes the resulting ZIP, and cross-checks that fingerprint against the Zip-SHA256 tag on the immutable Arweave transaction — independent of Verified Reality servers. Structural inspection is also available before decryption, so you only burn the key when you actually need to read the underlying media.

Does the Auditor need to call our servers to verify a Truth Packet?

Not for the cryptographic baseline. The session seal, manifest chain, embedded EXIF, and C2PA validation are all performed locally against the bytes on disk. For Arweave-stamped evidence, permaweb cross-checks query the immutable blockchain directly — not our Supabase database. The Command Centre is contacted only to confirm Storage Integrity (durable tier and sponsor locks) and to surface any published forensic reports for the same packet. A Truth Packet remains a bearer asset — it can be re-verified offline even if Verified Reality the company disappears.

Licensing and royalties

What is the Verified Reality Exchange?

The Verified Reality Exchange is the licensing marketplace for Truth Packets approved for commercial use. Each listing resolves to a Master Asset cap table and underlying provenance record. When a sale settles, the Stripe webhook reads that stored cap table and writes per-payee licensing payout rows — no sale-time scenario guessing. Some assets pass through HQ curation (Quinn Curation Board) before they appear live on the public storefront.

What are the licensing tiers (Evidentiary, Commercial, Sovereign)?

Three commercial postures: Evidentiary keeps media private with no Exchange listing and AI-training restrictions on the evidentiary posture. Commercial Co-Op lists on the Exchange at standard tier pricing with passive royalties flowing through the minted cap table. Sovereign Exclusive is a premium buyout — the asset is delisted from the public Exchange, registry status moves to SOVEREIGN_EXCLUSIVE, and pricing is evaluated dynamically (Orion) at checkout.

What is the default revenue split for client-led licensing?

Owner 80% / HQ 20% is the default for client-led commercial licensing (HQ Settings: Client IP Platform Fee %). The split is written into the cap table at mint time and used for every future Exchange sale. Verifiers are paid as Independent Contractors on client-funded missions — they do not receive backend royalties on client-owned IP. Internal HQ bounties are different: the capturing verifier typically holds about 50% of licensing gross by default (Internal Bounty Royalty %), with HQ holding the remainder.

What is an internal HQ bounty?

An internal bounty is field work funded by Verified Reality HQ — typically newsroom, civic-liability, or intelligence captures. The verifier earns the field stipend immediately as an Advance Against Royalties and a backend share on every future commercial license of the resulting Truth Packet.

What is an Advance Against Royalties?

It is the verifier-payment model on internal HQ bounties. The field stipend is paid up front when the mission completes (typically EMV × a configured risk rate). The verifier also receives a backend licensing stake in the minted cap table — by default about 50% of Exchange licensing gross on that asset. The advance does not mechanically reduce the verifier's cap-table bps on each sale; recoupment is modeled through HQ's larger platform share in the cap table rather than a per-sale clawback from the verifier's pool. The verifier is paid for the field work whether or not the asset later licenses.

Does Verified Reality allow AI data licensing?

Yes, for eligible commercial assets and under explicit rules. Verified Reality supports ethical AI data licensing of verified human-origin media, while prohibiting identity-exploitation use cases including voice mimicry, facial mimicry, and generation of non-consensual likeness content.

Can a creator or journalist license their own captured media?

Yes — that is the core value proposition of the Digital Ownership & IP surface. A creator's verified work carries a file-level pointer to its own database-side royalty contract. Anyone licensing the asset settles into that cap table; the creator keeps the long-tail royalty stream rather than handing it over to a platform.

Investigations and journalism

What is the Global Newsroom?

The Global Newsroom is Verified Reality's bounty-funded answer to the collapse of local journalism. Investigations group field captures into umbrella dossiers that a Lead Investigator can orchestrate across cities and countries, replacing five-figure travel-and-fixer budgets with a worldwide independent verifier network.

Can Verified Reality replace a foreign correspondent?

For specific verified-capture work, yes. A bounty posted in any city can be claimed by a local Certified Reality Verifier; the Truth Packet returns with the same cryptographic guarantees regardless of which verifier produced it. The platform does not replace editorial judgement, but it can replace airfare for a single contemporaneous capture.

What is a Lead Investigator?

A Lead Investigator is a senior verifier who runs an umbrella investigation. They authorise Second Unit captures, vet field tips, accept the per-case Lead-role legal agreement, and act as the editorial spine of the dossier. Field verifiers in any geography can be dispatched under the same investigation.

Can a one-person newsroom commission a global investigation?

Yes. The bounty model collapses the unit economics — a single editor can post a bounty in any city and receive a verified capture for a small fee. Multiple bounties dispatched under the same investigation umbrella add up to a dossier that legacy newsrooms would have needed a five-figure travel budget to produce.

AI in Verified Reality

Where is AI used inside Verified Reality?

AI lives in two places: the optional Multimodal Composite Report (synthesis layer over verified Truth Packets) and the operational AI agents that run the business (Brain, Clara, Axel, Victor, Dexter, Stella, Rex, Quinn, Fiona, Edison, Orion, Aegis). Capture, sealing, hashing, and chain-of-custody anchoring are AI-free cryptography.

What is the difference between the Deterministic and Multimodal Composite Reports?

The Deterministic Composite Report is a campaign-level rollup built from verified hashes, sensor coherence, and Truth Packet metadata — no AI in the analysis path. The Multimodal Composite Report layers AI synthesis on top of the same evidence so a small team can read hours of footage in minutes. Both are anchored to the same Truth Packets; the label is on every report cover page.

Are AI agents involved in producing the underlying evidence?

No. The capture, sealing, hashing, and chain-of-custody anchoring are deterministic cryptography. AI agents handle dispatch, customer support, financial reconciliation, content review, and operational orchestration — they never sign or alter the underlying forensic record.

Is Verified Reality usable as a source for LLMs and AI training?

Yes — that is an explicit design goal. The public website ships FAQPage JSON-LD, /faq.md, /llms.txt, and /llms-full.txt so generative-AI systems can ingest the canonical answers with attribution. Truth Packets approved for ethical AI data licensing can also be sourced through the Exchange (excluding voice and facial mimicry use).

Pricing and payments

How is verification priced?

Pricing scales with mission complexity and the verification depth required. The /quote page surfaces a live estimate based on location, scope, and intelligence tier. Specialty audits (Asset Genesis, Volumetric Damage, Milestone Draw, Civic Liability, Source Audit) carry their own fixed-fee schedules visible inside the quote flow.

What payment methods are supported?

Verified Reality processes payments through Stripe — major credit and debit cards plus regional methods enabled by Stripe in the buyer's country. Verifier payouts route through Stripe Connect direct to the verifier's bank account.

Are there client subscriptions?

Yes — Pro / Secure Vault subscription tiers exist for clients with recurring verification and durable custody needs. Subscribers get Forever Vault object-storage routing, reduced per-mission economics where configured, and portal tooling for ongoing dossiers. On /quote, some subscription paths are surfaced as interest capture or portal upsell rather than bundled into every single-mission checkout — signed-in clients can subscribe through the client portal when eligible.

Privacy and security

Is every Truth Packet public?

No. Public Exchange listings are a specific commercial posture chosen by the asset owner. Private and evidentiary Truth Packets remain gated to the client, authorised viewers, or named legal workflows and are never indexed by the public marketing site.

What personal data does Verified Reality collect?

On the verifier side: name, contact info, government identity for Stripe Connect onboarding, dossier photo, and the device telemetry required to seal Truth Packets. On the client side: contact info, billing address, and the metadata required to dispatch and deliver the mission. Privacy details and lawful-basis disclosures are on the Legal pages.

Is the platform privacy-law compliant?

Verified Reality is operated from Canada and follows PIPEDA federally and applicable provincial regimes (PHIPA in Ontario where health-adjacent). Cross-border buyers and verifiers are routed through Stripe and Supabase infrastructure with documented data-residency posture; the Legal pages publish current details and update history.

Where is Verified Reality data stored?

Operational records and account data live in Supabase (Postgres). Captured media lands on S3-compatible object storage — Cloudflare R2 in production paths — with separate ingestion (hot) and Forever Vault (durable) buckets where configured, plus optional AWS Glacier archive for long-term cold retention. Clients and missions that opt in may additionally stamp ciphertext to Arweave permaweb for decentralized anchoring. Storage region and bucket routing are configurable per deployment.

Compliance and jurisdictions

Where does Verified Reality operate today?

The first active Command Centre is London, Ontario (southwestern Ontario coverage). Additional regional Command Centres come online as regional managers are appointed. The HQ instance is the global financial and operational source of truth; regional instances inherit the protocol and report into HQ.

Does Verified Reality work in court?

Truth Packets are designed to satisfy evidentiary chain-of-custody standards: the seal time, sensor handshake, hash tree, and ledger anchor are all reproducible by an auditor without needing the company. Whether a specific packet is admitted in a specific proceeding is a matter for counsel and the court, but the underlying technical record is built for that environment.

What is the regulatory posture toward deepfakes and synthetic media?

Verified Reality's protocol is the affirmative side of the deepfake conversation — proving what is real, rather than chasing what is fake. The platform refuses to seal known synthetic media as authentic capture and treats spoofing the hardware handshake as grounds for an immediate verifier ban (see VRA Forensic Standards / Truth Protocol).

API and integrations

Does Verified Reality have a public API for AI agents?

Yes for verification — anonymous JSON endpoints under /api/public/ expose hash checks, Truth Packet lookup, and audit verification (see /llms.txt). Integrators can also use the headless v1 API at /api/v1/ (catalog search, quotes, bounty estimates, campaign submit/checkout) with Authorization: Bearer API_KEY. Authenticated clients can generate and revoke their own M2M keys from the client portal; keys are stored hashed server-side with granular scopes.

What public verification endpoints exist?

/api/public/verify-media/[hash] verifies a media hash; /api/public/verify-audit/by-hash/[sha256] verifies a certified audit by SHA-256; /api/public/verify-truth-packet/by-hash/[sha256] verifies a Truth Packet ZIP by SHA-256; /api/public/truth-packet/[id] returns Truth Packet details where authorised; /api/public/asset-contract resolves licensing contract metadata for public assets. These endpoints return JSON and require no authentication unless the packet tier requires it.

Does Verified Reality publish a structured FAQ for LLMs?

Yes. This page emits FAQPage JSON-LD inline, mirrors every Q&A as Markdown at /faq.md, and is included in the /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt indexes. Generative-AI systems can lift answers verbatim with attribution and link the user back to the canonical question anchor.

What are /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt?

Both are LLM-native index files following the emerging /llms.txt convention. /llms.txt lists every public page with a short description; /llms-full.txt concatenates the full canonical text of every public page plus the entire FAQ. Both are served as text/markdown and updated whenever the public corpus changes.

Company and contact

Who runs Verified Reality?

Verified Reality is operated by Bizbio Inc., founded and led by Bryan Bakker. The mission grew out of Bryan's earlier work at Newsload and Bizbio capturing local stories — the platform now exists to defend ground-truth reality against the Liar's Dividend and to make honesty profitable for creators and journalists.

How do I contact Verified Reality?

General support: support@verifiedreality.ca. Anonymous bug reports route directly to the founder via the form on /company with no AI in the path. Press, partnerships, and investor inquiries: use the same address; the Operations AI (Clara) triages on the public side and human operators respond from there.

How do I report a security issue?

Send a description to support@verifiedreality.ca with "SECURITY" in the subject line. Critical reports — including spoofed handshake attempts and seal-bypass research — are escalated to the founder directly. The bug-report form on /company is also AI-free and routes straight to the founder's inbox.

Need a verified record created?

Commission a field audit or register as a verifier to participate in hardware-attested reality capture.