collection of some interesting ATProto info and experiments

The links collected below are from a variety of people, some from the Bluesky team, and some from people experimenting with ATProto-related stuff. Remember to review the sources to know which is which (reminder as much to myself as others).

ATProto info

• Hosting ATProto PDS without containerization
• Notes on Running a Full Network ATProto Relay
• How to Self-Host All of Bluesky Except the AppView (For Now)
• What Does an AppView Implementation Entail?
• Current Relay (reference implementation) mirrors crawled repos (PDSs) - April 2024
• Jetstream - A lightweight event stream compared to Bsky Relay
  • Some additional Jetstream context
• Content Moderation/Takedown Discussion
  • Abbreviated: may take place on different levels, i.e. App/API, and infastructure, i.e. PDS/Relay/AppView.
• AppViews are tricky - A thread providing an overview of how ATProto works, & concluding with some details on operational costs
  • Full quote:

    running an AppView is tricker. this is a high-scale high-throughput service that requires seriously beefy machines. we don't expect people to be running them for fun on an Rasp. Pi, but we do want it to be feasible

Somewhere In-Between

• Create and Publish Your Own did:web
  • Related to ATProto based on its use of DIDs
• Visual history of early ATProto Development
• Another history of ATProto Development
  • See also: Bluesky and the AT Protocol

ATProto Experiments

• Running a blog on ATProto, reference implementation
• ATProto browser
• Independent PDS directory
• Bridgy Fed - Bridge between Websites, ActivityPub, and ATProto

Glossary:

• ATProto: Authenticated Transfer Protocol - This name is in reference to the fact that all user-data is signed by the authoring users, which makes it possible to broadcast the data through many services and prove it's real without having to speak directly to the originating server. Source
• DID: Decentralized Identifiers - DIDs, or Decentralized IDentifiers, are universally-unique identifiers which represent data repos. They are permanent and non-human-readable. DIDs are a W3C specification. The AT Protocol currently supports did:web and did:plc, two different DID methods. Source
• PDS: Personal Data Server - A PDS, or Personal Data Server, is a server that hosts a user. A PDS will always store the user's data repo and signing keys. It may also assign the user a handle and a DID. Many PDSes will host multiple users. Source
• Relay or Firehose - A Relay is an aggregator of data repos from across the Atmosphere. They sync the repos from PDSes and produce a firehose of change events. AppViews use a Relay to fetch user data. Source