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.
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.
Ideas & Perspectives
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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
More articlesWhere 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.
DocSmith 0.9.9 Released: Image Localization and Smart Refinement
AIGNE DocSmith has released a new beta version 0.9.9 that introduces two new features to improve the multilingual documentation experience:Image Local
Build & Tutorials
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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
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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.
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.
Build a travel collection in Aside
Start with a route guide and a record of your own. Save content, add a note, and bring the pieces together in a travel collection in Aside.
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.
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.
Bookmarking is a runtime capability, not a site plugin
Bookmarking and notes should not be rebuilt on every site. Arc ships them as a default-on runtime capability: hidden until you log in, easy to turn off, or bound to buttons the page already has.
The CLARITY Act Is Dead. DAOs Died Long Ago. Is AI a New Hope?
A blockchain builder reflects on the Senate vote, token governance, and whether AI agents can do any better.
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.
On the Eve of the CLARITY Vote: A Blockchain Builder's Case for Clear Boundaries
We need more than one crypto-friendly administration. We need legal boundaries that builders can follow across administrations.
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.
What's next: ARC, one real application at a time
The new site is live. Here is how we plan to bring ARC into the community, data spaces and everyday applications, with migrations, new products and builders taking part along the way.
OpenAI's Agents API is a harness. ARC is a new kind of computer for agents
OpenAI's Agents API turns the Codex loop into a hosted API: sessions, compaction, tools, sandboxes, plugins. That layer is real. It is still not a computer with identity, durable state, and an owner who can walk away with it. ARC attaches at the seam they already documented.
ArcBlock’s new website is live. ARC takes the stage.
ArcBlock’s new website runs on ARC, with all implementation code written by AI coding agents. Explore the new site and the technology behind it. The previous site remains available for about 30 days.
A globe you can put on the page
A rotating globe on a page is not decoration bolted under the text. It is a layout component: figure, scene, or backdrop. The homepage already uses it. This article puts several in the reading column.
Light on the page, not a picture of trees
Type on a white field is a document. Light moving over the type is a room. leaf-shadow is that overlay; gobo-loop is how you mint a new clip from a sentence.
Equalized capability does not automatically concentrate
When AI equalizes the ability to build, control does not automatically tighten. Many small units and home tools can coexist; super-individuals and giant canteens are not the default.
If you still picture the old software and the old software company, you will misread this shift
Many people still imagine software as slow, expensive craft, and software companies as hiring engines. Both have changed. Building it is no longer the main bottleneck.
AI can draft the homepage five ways. You pick on the real page.
A Web Device page can keep several finished renders on one URL. An agent drafts the set; a person picks on the real page; visitors only enter an A/B split if you open it.
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.
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.