|
|
|
|
|
|
by d1sxeyes
12 days ago
|
|
|
The idea of an 'instance' is not really clear. If you want to run a social network on ATProto, you do need the relay and app view, and those are indeed heavy requirements, but the architecture is not the same, and it depends what you're actually trying to achieve. If you just want to use ATProto for your own small app, there are ways to do it on more constrained hardware. The more usage it gets, the more it scales up. > On ActivityPub and Nostr you develop all kind of applications already, it is not only Twitter clones, but also Instagram clones, Reddit clones, on Nostr there is even the resurrected Vine (https://about.divine.video/). Same! You can explore the (unfortunately named, given the point I'm trying to make :)) 'Bluesky directory' to see apps which use ATProto: https://blueskydirectory.com Note that most of these have nothing to do with Bluesky. > And it is not trivial to switch from the Bluesky did:plc (which you cannot run in write-mode on your own and need to use the official Bluesky owned) to did:web, which you can run on your own That's true, but it's not trivial to run your own Mastodon instance either... |
|
|
Note those are not heavy requirements in any atproto-specific sense.
Running an atproto relay (at the current scale) is $30/month. If you're running a popular app, this is probably comparable with some of your SaaS subscriptions. Or you could use a community-run one or pool resources with other apps. Also, many atproto apps don't use a relay at all, and rely on a community cache like https://constellation.microcosm.blue/ instead.
Running an AppView is only as expensive as running any backend. "AppViews are expensive" is a myth extrapolated from "Running a copy of a Bluesky AppView is expensive", which is true because a Bluesky AppView is a backend server that's supposed to store and serve millions of posts. It would be expensive with any technology! Atproto isn't adding an extra tax here. Running a centralized service at the same scale would be equally expensive, and a Mastodon instance at that scale would simply not run.
If your AppView only serves your app's users (and has nothing to do with Bluesky), the cost is cheap or nonexistent. It's just a normal backend that listens to a websocket stream and writes some stuff to a database.