Does anyone know of an ATproto server implementation besides Bluesky, yet?

Laurens Hof

@rra @shoq but its different again for the PLC Directory, of which there is one main one, hosted by Bluesky, which feels super centralised. But as the DID is selfcertified, and there are independent PLC dirs, its less big of a deal. If Bluesky org turns bad, its just a matter for the AppViews to change the reference location to a new plc dir.

So again, counting the plc dirs would seem super centralised, but its reasonably resilient against the bluesky org turning bad

𝓻𝓻𝓪

@laurenshof @shoq Thanks this is super useful to understand it better. Are all PLC Dirs interoperable / interchangeable or is a given identity tied to a specific PLC Dir? I mean, I can run a parallel DNS system and have my own tlds but this is functionally useless.

Laurens Hof

@rra @shoq

so your actual identity on bsky is a DID, which canonically lives on your PDS. This resolves to a user facing handle, which is a website domain. To verify the relationship between DID and domain you need to put your DID in the DNS of your domain.

But you can easily change handles/domains, its just that your DID always remains the same. My did is always did:plc:mdjhvva6vlrswsj26cftjttd, but I've had laurenshof.online, fediversereport.com and laurenshof.bsky.social all as handles /1

Laurens Hof

@rra @shoq

so there needs to be a place to resolve from did to handle that knows for the most recent state. the PLC Directory is a simple KV database that resolves a domain for any given handle, as you can see here:

did:plc:mdjhvva6vlrswsj26cftjttd

(web.plc.directory)

so there is no canonical truth living on plc.directory, thats either on my PDS or on the DNS of my domain

AppViews need a PLC dir, but there is no real reason it needs to be the bluesky-operated one

Laurens Hof

@rra @shoq an appview like frontpage.fyi could point to this other plc.directory (https://bsky.app/profile/str4d.xyz/post/3l43d67ts5z2e) right now if they want to, theres just no real reason to do so

Erlend Sogge Heggen

@laurenshof this is excellent and deserves a ‘Are atproto’s PLCs centralized?’ blog post

Pelle Wessman

@laurenshof @rra @shoq How easy is it to bootstrap a new such directory from scratch?

Laurens Hof

@erlend too many things to write! but yeah this is such a common point of contention it definitely deserves its own blog post for sure

Laurens Hof

@voxpelli @rra @shoq Str4d has the code floating around somewhere. so clearly possible in case a failsafe against bsky is needed, but no idea if its a project that can be done quickly in an afternoon or if it takes a whole weekend and a lot of frustration

bryan newbold

@reiver @shoq hi! I work on the atproto docs.

we have some specs coming soon for "blobs", the firehose, and account hosting. you can see some drafts here:
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto-website/pulls

are there other things you found missing or poorly documented?