[mikeryan]

Bluesky was started within Twitter as a federated social protocol in 2019. Spun out in 2021 as a standalone company and it was also being used in the Crypto group at Twitter until Elon came in.

I'm sure just because of its age and principals involved it's been heavily influenced by the crypto crowd.

But suddenly, without anything else really stepping in to fill the void, it's the Twitter alternative of the day. Anyway not surprised to find some gotcha's like this all things considered.

[steveklabnik]

> I'm sure just because of its age and principals involved it's been heavily influenced by the crypto crowd.

It builds off of several specifications that came from the crypto crowd. It does not use a proof of stake or proof of work blockchain, though, so depending on how you use the words "crypto" and "blockchain," it either is or is not those things.

[x-complexity]

> > I'm sure just because of its age and principals involved it's been heavily influenced by the crypto crowd.

> It builds off of several specifications that came from the crypto crowd. It does not use a proof of stake or proof of work blockchain, though, so depending on how you use the words "crypto" and "blockchain," it either is or is not those things.

From the protocol's FAQ docs itself:

> Is ATP a blockchain?

> No. ATP is a federated protocol. It's not a blockchain nor does it use a blockchain.

https://atproto.com/guides/faq#is-atp-a-blockchain

Architecturally, it's an attempt at improving ActivityPub in terms of account transfers & portability between federated instances, which ActivityPub doesn't inherently support. Mastodon, by comparison, requires one of those steps to be the explicit export into a locally-saved file, rather than communications between the federated instances themselves.

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/

[steveklabnik]

Yes. I agree with the FAQ. But I have heard decent arguments (that I disagree with) regarding what "blockchain" means by people I respect, and so I want to be respectful of that.