[vvpan]

I'll post this as a top level comment, because I think it is crucial: A few people are saying that it is expensive to run a relay but others have done it for as low as $34/month [1]. So unless somebody presents other proof that it is expensive I would say that those posters are either wrong and trying to mislead us on purpose.

Edit: actually the article links to somebody doing it for $18/month.

[1] https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l

[whyrusleeping]

I've also done a full network replica (all the data indexed in a postgres) on a raspberry pi (with an 8tb nvme attached via a hat). Its really not expensive to do . And if I wanted to drop data older than say 3 months, it would be even cheaper still.

[vvpan]

Case in point! This is an often mentioned statement on which the argument that "atproto is no decentralized" largely hinges. There are honest atproto digs out there but that is not one.

[fc417fc802]

> There are honest atproto digs out there but that is not one.

Which one? The expense, or not being decentralized? The latter remains valid because the majority of the userbase chooses ("only" by default ofc) to coordinate through a single operator. Network effects mean that you either play by their rules or you aren't allowed in the garden.

It's good to learn that a full mirror is so cheap but I think the criticism still holds to the extent that it's a high enough price that unless something changes it will continue to discourage the network from ever becoming truly federated. Compare to activitypub where you can stand up a fully self sufficient node on more or less anything that's capable of networking. The obvious downside being that the network is more fragmented and often less reliable overall (ex nodes are regularly flaky or go missing entirely, no single unified view of the network, etc etc all the perfectly valid complaints about AP).

I think AP, AT, and nostr all get certain things right but all have major downsides baked into their designs. Note that I don't mean this comment to be negative, merely to respond to your remark that the dig in question is somehow invalid.

[fsflover]

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45077291

Are we decentralized yet? (arewedecentralizedyet.online)

492 points by Bogdanp 6 months ago | 283 comments

[aorth]

How much was the 8TB NVMe?

[whyrusleeping]

Cheaper than it is now! I think it was about $1100 at the time, definitely the most expensive part of the whole setup

[Zambyte]

> We run a full AppView + PDS + Relay for ~$1,772/mo. PDS is cheap (~$0.03/user/mo, 4 vCPUs, 32GB RAM). AppView is the expensive part; indexes the entire network (16TB DB), not just your users. Storage scales linearly with network activity. PDS scales linearly with your account count.

Source, Rudy, the creator of Blacksky: https://bsky.app/profile/rude1.blacksky.team/post/3mgpvknv4i...

The thing that makes ATproto nice and decentralized is that PDSs are decoupled from the application itself. Anyone can run a separate AppView, and just a handful of AppViews is enough to give people meaningful choice on ATproto, with the benefit of being much more approachable than ActivityPub for people who are not technically inclined.

[konart]

$18 can be "expensive".

People live in different conditions, have different income and (even more crucial) different expenses.

Not to mention subjective need. I may be interested in a relay, but I don't really need one. So for me 18$ will be too much. 5$? Maybe. (This is about as much as I'm paying for Fastmail right now, for example).

[croon]

The point isn't "literally everyone can run it", but to refute that "only Bluesky can run it and thus lock everyone in".

[sellmesoap]

I'll go halfers with you, any other takers? I feel like sharing infrastructure via small online co-ops can take the bite out of the cost. So much cheaper then the cost of being the product via meta/goog etc.