The Data Is Still There. I Have Already Lost It.
Data in your hands may no longer be usable. Data in the cloud may still be yours. A personal history of data sovereignty across floppy disks, MO media, cloud services, private keys, and AI.
ARCBlock JOURNAL
Ideas worth exploring
A living library of ideas, products, practical guides, and stories from ArcBlock.
Why We Built Aside
We watched great tools change hands or disappear. That is why ArcBlock built Aside: an ARC-powered iPhone app that sends every Share back to a place you own.
DiscussKit, Rebuilt on ARC
DiscussKit has been rebuilt on ARC, and ArcBlock Community has completed its move. This is a new division of responsibility across discussions, identity and user-owned data.
Ideas & Perspectives
CLARITY Act or Not, Let’s Clarify ABT
Clear law matters, but a product must also explain what its token does, who controls it, what rules apply, and how participants reconcile the record.
Agents Need an Identity. DID May Be the Best Place to Start
An agent cannot exist only as a platform account and an API key. DID can provide a portable, long-lived identity anchor, but authorization, runtime proof, revocation, and audit still have to do their own jobs.
Functional Networks, Not Perpetual Promises
The SEC staff's new crypto FAQ draws a useful distinction between improving a working system and promising to build one. What matters is distinguishing delivered capabilities from work that remains promised.
Products & Updates
Accepting Payments Is Not Issuing a Stablecoin
Issuing a stablecoin, accepting payment, and operating a digital service are different systems. Most applications need billing and credits, not a currency of their own.
Where your AI spend goes: an introduction to Agent Observability
Every model call an agent makes is written to a ledger. This is where those ledgers live, which of the three pages answers which question, whose data you are allowed to see, and the two boundaries you have to know before you read a number off any of them.
ARC Now Supports the MCP 2026-07-28 Specification
ARC already spoke MCP. This upgrade aligns that surface with MCP 2026-07-28: stateless streamable HTTP and standard OAuth discovery so third-party agents can reach Blocklets without a special bridge.
Build & Tutorials
After Software: Collaboration, Production, and How Value Gets Shared
Making software no longer requires making a company first. When productive capacity is scattered across people and AI, collaboration, ownership, and value need a new organization.
Web Device: Declare a Website, Then Pick the Right Path
Web Device is one of ARC's core capabilities: declare a .web/ folder anywhere in AFS, and the data and AUP under it get rendered server-side into a website, SEO checks, broken-link detection, and visitor analytics included for free. This piece covers how it differs from UI Device (/dev/ui/web), how to use it, and which situations call for which.
Small World: Every Agent Lives in Its Own Projection
AFS has a design principle we call Small World: every agent, every app, every process sees not the global world, but a small world projected specifically for it. Anything outside that world isn't "access denied". It simply doesn't exist. Here's where the idea comes from, why it's more than a security mechanism, and how to try it yourself.
Stories
Community Bounty Program Update
Hi everyone, Over the past months, our community bounty programs have helped drive meaningful improvements across our ecosystem. Through the Bug Bount
Flash Talk: The New Browser War Where Your Data is the Battlefield
AI has restarted the browser wars. The prize isn’t tabs or benchmarks—it’s your data. Most “AI browsers” ship a cloud-first model that vacuums everyth
ArcBlock Weekly Product Highlights
Over the last week, the ArcBlock team has rolled out a wave of updates this past week to improve usability, performance, and AI-readiness across mult
Latest
More articlesThe Data Is Still There. I Have Already Lost It.
Data in your hands may no longer be usable. Data in the cloud may still be yours. A personal history of data sovereignty across floppy disks, MO media, cloud services, private keys, and AI.
Why We Built Aside
We watched great tools change hands or disappear. That is why ArcBlock built Aside: an ARC-powered iPhone app that sends every Share back to a place you own.
DiscussKit, Rebuilt on ARC
DiscussKit has been rebuilt on ARC, and ArcBlock Community has completed its move. This is a new division of responsibility across discussions, identity and user-owned data.
Accepting Payments Is Not Issuing a Stablecoin
Issuing a stablecoin, accepting payment, and operating a digital service are different systems. Most applications need billing and credits, not a currency of their own.
CLARITY Act or Not, Let’s Clarify ABT
Clear law matters, but a product must also explain what its token does, who controls it, what rules apply, and how participants reconcile the record.
After Software: Collaboration, Production, and How Value Gets Shared
Making software no longer requires making a company first. When productive capacity is scattered across people and AI, collaboration, ownership, and value need a new organization.
Agents Need an Identity. DID May Be the Best Place to Start
An agent cannot exist only as a platform account and an API key. DID can provide a portable, long-lived identity anchor, but authorization, runtime proof, revocation, and audit still have to do their own jobs.
Web Device: Declare a Website, Then Pick the Right Path
Web Device is one of ARC's core capabilities: declare a .web/ folder anywhere in AFS, and the data and AUP under it get rendered server-side into a website, SEO checks, broken-link detection, and visitor analytics included for free. This piece covers how it differs from UI Device (/dev/ui/web), how to use it, and which situations call for which.
Small World: Every Agent Lives in Its Own Projection
AFS has a design principle we call Small World: every agent, every app, every process sees not the global world, but a small world projected specifically for it. Anything outside that world isn't "access denied". It simply doesn't exist. Here's where the idea comes from, why it's more than a security mechanism, and how to try it yourself.
Functional Networks, Not Perpetual Promises
The SEC staff's new crypto FAQ draws a useful distinction between improving a working system and promising to build one. What matters is distinguishing delivered capabilities from work that remains promised.