Encrypt payloads and use scopes

Keep private content private, and group records under one owner on purpose.

Encrypted payloads

Arkiv expiry hides a record from queries, but the payload stays readable in the transaction that created it. Anything that must stay private needs encryption, not just a short lifetime.

await ark.createEntity({
  payload: new TextEncoder().encode("refill: insulin, 2 pens"),
  contentType: "text/plain",
  attributes: { type: "note" },
  expires: ExpirationTime.fromDays(7),
  encrypt: true,
})

const [note] = await ark.myEntities({ where: { type: "note" } })
note.toText() // "refill: insulin, 2 pens"

• The payload is encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a key derived from your root key and this record’s one-time key. Only the same wallet, in the same app, can decrypt it, on any device.
• Encrypted and plain records of the same input land in the same size bucket: padding always reserves room for encryption, so using encrypt does not make a record stand out.
• Attributes are never encrypted. They are what queries match on. Keep them coarse.
• The envelope signature covers the ciphertext, so tampering is still detected by anyone.

Sharing an encrypted record with someone else is not supported in this version.

Scopes: one owner on purpose

By default every record gets a new owner. A scope makes all records written in it share one owner, deliberately linking them, for example a public profile or a thread you want to be visibly the same author:

await ark.createEntity({ ...profileUpdate, scope: "public-profile" })
await ark.createEntity({ ...anotherUpdate, scope: "public-profile" })

const profileAddress = await ark.scopeAddress("public-profile")

Records in a scope are linked to each other, not to your wallet or to your other records. Use one scope per thing you want to be recognisable, and no scope for everything else.