URMA PROTOCOL / V0
Private bytes.
Public records.
An application-agnostic contract for writing, verification and recovery. Journalism is the first use case; photos are one kind of private payload.
Recover
the original.
Private text, images, documents and arbitrary files share one encrypted-object format. URMA owns fragmentation, authentication, ordering and exact reconstruction. Real chunk counts are visible; content type, exact length and original digest are encrypted.
Recovery needs the compartment root, source coordinates and accessible records. No original wallet, application database, final manifest or URMA service is required. Local capacity limits do not redefine protocol validity.
Fixed layouts.
Verified authorship.
Posts, replies, identity profiles and constrained avatars are allocated URMA kinds. Every public record uses the same Taproot binding, one reveal and a 32 KiB serialized cap. Exact UTF-8 and author transaction proofs are validated by the protocol implementation.
A reply carries one same-chain transaction reference before its text. Profiles and 512-byte pixel avatars are separate transactions. Wire remains atomic. Protocol revision 0.3 separately adds generic public objects through data parts, leaf manifests and a root manifest. Git is the first interface for this new capability; arbitrary bytes remain possible and no uploader or gallery is implied.
Shared services.
Interoperable profiles.
Publication, wallets, sources, local indexes and exports are reusable services. Capture Evidence and Private Files assign separate domain semantics over the same private objects. Optional Archive Redundancy supplies repair artifacts without weakening canonical validation.
Capture, Archive, Wire and Git have independent application contracts; Git has an approved public HEAD-only design; its application remains to be implemented. Hardware is optional. Profile interoperability has its own schemas and evidence and is distinct from URMA conformance.
journalism-protocol-notes/PROTOCOL.md is the sole normative source. V0 remains a normative draft. Revision 0.3 allocates kinds 07–09 under version byte 00, preserving existing kinds and private cryptographic domains. Root and component evidence have declared scopes; full conformance and external audit are not claimed.