I finally got how ATProto works on a basic conceptual level from this paper

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03239

Having been none the wiser from reading the spec and other confused ppl on hacker news

That's my first gripe with Bluesky

Nostr and ActivityPub can both be understood in 5 minutes from reading their specs

ActivityPub is particularly well written

And it's not that ATProto is conceptually complex

But anyways, I appreciated the architecture of ATProto from a pure architecture point of view

But I think it's flawed in practical terms

Decentralization is small, many, cheap

ATProto is expensive

To develop applications for

And to run services on

And increasingly so the more decentralized it becomes

It's got a natural brake on decentralization

I'm going to sign up for Bluesky as I'm curious what the culture is like

Be interested to read your article!