Jack Dorsey skipped ActivityPub, built AtProto, lost Twitter, funded Bluesky, watched it become a company with VCs and a board, said it was "repeating all the mistakes," left, and now funds Nostr.

@cy @mastodonmigration @baralheia so like, if I wanted to, I could have a local copy of the entire did:plc registry, it's like 130-145 GB uncompressed, including indexes.

Then I could resolve a did:plc by asking my local database. At some point I've heard there'll be a websocket API for it too. There's a project "allegedly" that helps with mirroring, like what https://plc.wtf does

But most people don't care to replicate that, and instead use the HTTP API

Updates after initial creation contain a pointer to the most-recent previous operation (by hash).

@cy @mastodonmigration @baralheia because there's a tonne of spam entries in there. This is the public key, handle, services from the DID document, and the rotation public keys. And specifically it's the full changelog for each DID.

There's like 1.5 million spam entries, all referencing trump's domain.

@cy @mastodonmigration @baralheia did:webvh is also a blockchain then.

Basically you need to have the full did history for a bunch of purposes for like trusting a full DID document from its creation to current state.

@cy @mastodonmigration @baralheia nope, you just need a previously signed key, e.g., the rotation key.

But if you want to prove the lineage of a given DID you do need that full history. Hence did:webvh (full history) vs did:web (current snapshot)

did:plc decided that they wanted to retain the full history but typically only surface the current snapshot.

@evan @quillmatiq @dansup the problem is, and always has been, that we keep fighting between the protocols and slinging mud, such that it deters collaboration.

That's why I wrote that damn letter back in September last year. The more this carries on, the more it hurts us all.

In case you need a refresher: https://writings.thisismissem.social/statement-on-discourse-about-activitypub-and-at-protocol/

That actively had people on both sides going "hell yeah, let's work together" and a small group of people decided they didn't like that. Think about how that impacted developer relations. Think about how that harmed collaborations.

Think about the ideas that could have been cross-pollinated and instead we lost them for ActivityPub and for AT Protocol. (though, tbh, I think it's mainly ActivityPub that lost out here, because AT Protocol is so much further ahead in splitting data from applications)

Also, fwiw, Mastodon has had huge investors to keep it alive at times. That €1 Million euros that Eugen was paid didn't come from the community supporting the project on Patreon. That came from one or a few large funders (investors).

@stefan it comes from @laurenshof.

@thisismissem @stefan
id estimate it at 12M MAU, probably a bit higher (this is dependent on the ratio you take for users participate versus lurkers, this estimates that this ratio is the same for DAU as it is for MAU. but likely that this ratio is higher for MAU than for DAU)
https://bsky.app/profile/laurenshof.online/post/3mdisqjlb5s2i

@thisismissem donors, not investors.
@evan @quillmatiq @dansup

@renchap @evan @quillmatiq @dansup rich people who believe in the vision and want to see the future you're promising. They might not expect a 10x return, but let's not kid ourselves, they're putting in because there's something in it for them and they get a nice tax write-off.

If your donors stop donating because they no longer believe in the vision/team/etc, then that'll limit the project. You need these wealthy donors to stay happy, as much as Bluesky PBC needs their investors to stay happy.

Wealthy people with money to give/invest in support of a future you've sold them.

@renchap @evan @quillmatiq @dansup your roadmap is also largely determined by whatever you can get money for. The argument of investors in a PBC vs donors in a non-profit is silly because you're both taking money from extremely wealthy people to survive long enough to hopefully be sustainable without those big cash injections.

You've almost certainly had to make promises to donors to get them onboard.

It might not be a promise of a return, but wealthy people are still exerting some control on the project.

@thisismissem You are wrong here, those donations were not made in exchange of any specific features.

This is the case for grants where the money is in exchange of specific deliverables, but those donations were not grants.

@evan @quillmatiq @dansup

@renchap @evan @quillmatiq @dansup sure. I believe your 2024 annual report states that 1.5 million from Jeff Atwood was specifically for trying to restructure the projects organisation, that's a "feature" as big as any.

@thisismissem this is what went to Eugen + some legal fees around the complex legal restructuring that went alongside it.

@evan @quillmatiq @dansup

@thisismissem @stefan the reason for doing this multiplier is not so much for getting MAU right in absolute terms, but because mastodon/fedi MAU data also includes lurkers in their data. So you need it to get a fair comparison between fedi and the atmosphere

@laurenshof eh, you can certainly speculate but then maybe you need to start thinking of the fact that estimating fediverse MAU is far less exact and likely to underreport because you have to make decisions about querying tens of thousands of servers and a significant chunk don't even report active users. Do you also apply this there?

@ikuturso yeah, theres really only one server where them not reporting mau makes a meaningful difference, and thats misskey.social. i had a post from summer 2024 i think where i estimated them at 250k mau at that point based on total post count, but havent done the analysis since

@laurenshof well that's the easy one to point to where it makes a huge difference but that doesn't mean the rest don't make a difference in aggregate.

There are also some large instances that are widely (but not universally) defederated and usually not counted in the stats you can get from places like fedidb. That's in addition to the ones they simply miss.