FAQ / SCOPE AND BOUNDARIES
One protocol.
Clear responsibilities.
The protocol, profiles, applications and their current limits.
What is URMA?
The application-agnostic protocol for encrypted private objects, atomic public records and generic public multipart objects. Shared services, interoperable non-normative profiles, applications and optional hardware build on it.
How do Capture and Archive differ?
Capture consumes Capture Evidence for journalistic originals, context, derivatives and sessions. Archive consumes Private Files for generic files, names, paths, directories and collections. Both share one archive engine; separate products do not require separate installables now.
Is URMA limited to photos or journalism?
No. Private objects preserve arbitrary bytes. Journalism, freedom of the press and the seized-camera scenario are the first concrete use case, delivered by Capture.
What do Wire and Git do?
Wire serves public text, identities and replies with local verification and indexing. URMA Git has an approved public HEAD-only design: a standalone snapshot of the current commit and final tree, restored into a normal editable repository. The application remains to be implemented.
Do profiles change V0?
No. Profiles define interoperable application meaning above canonical objects and records. Their schemas and evidence have their own revisions. They cannot change URMA kinds, cryptography, fragmentation or mandatory validation. Capture Evidence and Private Files schemas are not yet complete interoperability releases.
How are public posts stored?
Every public V0 record uses Taproot commit/reveal, at most 32 KiB serialized and one reveal. There is no cross-transaction article reassembly. Names and constrained avatars are separate author-authenticated transactions.
Can Wire publish photos on-chain?
Photos remain at external HTTP/HTTPS URLs. The on-chain visual exception is the fixed 32×32, 512-byte pixel avatar. External media is mutable and not preserved by URMA; Wire provides bounded loading and an autoload opt-out.
What does private recovery require?
The compartment root, accessible records and retrieval coordinates. No original wallet, app database or final manifest is needed for canonical original bytes. Catalog or context manifests can be needed for additional profile semantics.
Are limits and networks product choices?
Normative byte/count bounds and Taproot validation belong to URMA. Smaller client limits, fees and provider choices belong to implementations. Capture’s Litecoin-first direction is not a protocol-wide default. Wire feeds and replies remain chain/network-local.
Does verification prove a scene was genuine?
No. Authentication protects byte integrity or establishes authorization by a key. It does not establish the truth of a scene, a civil identity or capture-context assertions.
What is demonstrated?
Root vectors, independent recovery and local regtest have scoped evidence. Android separately records V0 integration and a live Litecoin Testnet recovery by an independent desktop reader. Full protocol conformance, complete profile interoperability, product releases and external audit are distinct outstanding claims.
Can applications be funded separately?
Yes. Capture, Archive, Wire and Git have separate scopes. Protocol, shared-service and profile deliverables are identified and funded once. Optional Camera hardware is separate.
What are the licenses?
CC0-1.0 for protocol materials/data and 0BSD for project-authored source. Dependencies retain their own licenses.