Bsky raises $15m from Blockchain Capital, the VC's press release hints at what they're interested in:
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@jdp23 @jonny we basically see client apps and appviews as entwined (hence the name). a big app would run their own appview. the difference from platforms like reddit or Twitter is that they *can* do this, because all the public data is open, from the PDS instances (if you are building a big appview, you probably just run your own relay as well; and a CDN)
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@jdp23 @jonny even alt bsky apps like greysky and deck.blue, which mostly build on the bluesky appview/API, have their own server infra for extra features. this broad pattern is sometimes called "backend for frontend", and we expect it to be more common, complementing the current pattern where clients directly connect to PDS. the "stausphere" demo app demonstrates it
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I realize that's how you collectively see things ... you and I are quite possibly the only two people in fedi who believe that multiple Relays are likely (and even I am skeptical about how likely multiple full-network Relays are unless Bluesky PBC goes overboard trying to monetize or restrict your Relay). And I get it that Relays are optional but the paper says things like "Consuming the firehose is an easier way of building an index over the whole network, compared to directly subscribing to the source PDSes" and "Any developers wanting to create a new social mode on top of atproto can define a new lexicon with new record types, and these records can be stored in existing repositories and aggregated in the firehose without requiring any. changes to the Relay."
So time will tell, but as long as there aren't independent full-network Relays my guess is that people will continue to think of it as a chokepoint.
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