Bluesky is microblogging social network and an initiative to develop a protocol for decentralized social networking. Its flagship service, bsky.app was launched as a beta in early 2023.
Despite being based on a decentralized protocol, Bluesky remains centralized in practice as no third-party services that can interact with bsky.app have gained traction. Will this change before the end of 2024?
This question resolves to YES if there is a service that meets the following criteria:
The service is not controlled by Bluesky.
The service can interact with bsky.app in terms of things such as following and replies between users on both services. (This need not be through the AT Protocol, in case bsky.app integrates with the Fediverse, for example.)
The service allows users to create accounts separate from bsky.app. (That is, it is not simply an alternative "view" to an account on bsky.app. In the AT Protocol federation architecture this would likely mean a separate PDS.)
The service has at least 100 users. (If multiple such services exist, they must have a combined total of at least 100 users.)
Credible evidence of meeting these criteria emerges before 00:00 UTC on January 1, 2025.
If no such service exists, then question resolves to NO.
I may provide liquidity subsidies but will not otherwise trade in this question.
Related questions
https://bsky.social/about/blog/02-22-2024-open-social-web
> Today, we’re excited to announce that the Bluesky network is federating
The 100 users criterion isn't met yet, but I don't imagine it'll take long.
@Retr0id Are there any numbers yet? According to the developer blog post linked from there, external PDSes will be limited to 10 accounts each to start. There's apparently a Discord server to coordinate which has almost 1000 members now, although I don't know how this translates to the number of PDSes currently in operation.
@CollectedOverSpread I don't know any numbers but it'd be possible to write a crawler script to find out
oh wait I just read the "If multiple such services exist, they must have a combined total of at least 100 users" part again - if the sum of not-bsky-hosted accounts is greater than 100 already, would that resolve it to YES?
I think right now the 3rd party PDSes are mostly just devs testing, e.g. normal people can't sign up to them (afaik).
if the sum of not-bsky-hosted accounts is greater than 100 already, would that resolve it to YES?
If there are total of at least 100 users with non-bsky-hosted accounts, then yes. (I do mean users, not accounts, so if, say, there are 100 accounts but it's clear that they belong to just 20 developers, then that wouldn't count.)
I think right now the 3rd party PDSes are mostly just devs testing, e.g. normal people can't sign up to them (afaik).
First, I will note that the accounts on these PDSes must be able to interact with the production Bluesky network, according to the second criterion. I assume that this is the case for the federation that was announced earlier this year, as opposed to the federation sandbox that's been around for a while.
With that out of the way, I'm thinking about the third criterion: When I wrote "allows users to create accounts," I did have in mind some degree of "public access," either simple self-serve signup or a request and approval process like some Mastodon instances require. That part is a little vague though so I'd like to ask @traders about their interpretation.
https://bsky.social/about/blog/02-06-2024-join-bluesky
> This month, we’ll be rolling out an experimental early version of “federation,” or the feature that makes the network so open and customizable.
That’s why our biggest priority right now is launching federation, which is timelined for early next year.
https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/11-15-2023-toward-federation (November 15, 2023)
@CollectedOverSpread no new evidence. There were only 10 traders on this market and I thought the odds were way too low