Last Week in the ATmosphere - 2025jan.d

Welcome to this edition of Last Week in the ATmosphere, focused on everything that is happening in the wider ATProto network, the ATmosphere. Next week will be focused on Bluesky again. Bluesky continues to grow in users, and there are now 30 million Bluesky accounts. The wider ATmosphere is tiny in comparison, this dashboard gives a good indication of how small all other apps are. While Bluesky is a polished product ready for regular people to use, other ATmosphere apps are in a phase of experimentation. This week's newsletter shows the variety of things people are building on ATProto. And while most apps are not ready for mainstream adoption yet, they do showcase the wide range of possibilities that ATProto affords.

ATmosphere

Streamplace is a new platform for livestreaming that is integrated with ATProto that is now entering an invite-only testing phase. Streamplace is the software that allows people to livestream, either via a mobile app or desktop client, that people can host themselves. The integration with ATProto means that you log in with your ATProto account via Oauth. It does not store the video live stream on your PDS, that is hosted on a different server, your PDS only contains the signing key to verify that it is indeed your ATProto account who is doing the livestreaming. In this way it differs from Grayhaze. Grayhaze is also building livestreaming on ATProto, where it also stores the actual video files on your PDS.

Roomy is a newly announced P2P group app for ATProto that is currently in development. The project is one of the first recipients of a grant by Skyseed, a VC fund for ATProto. Roomy has a roadmap for the next month, in which they aim to have a working MVP. One of the main limitations for building chatting apps on ATProto is that ATProto does not handle private data. Roomy's solution is to focus on public group chats for now. A short video of what Roomy will look like can be seen here. What makes Roomy so interesting is in that it shows that ATProto does not have to exists on its own, and can be combined with other protocols (or in this case, Automerge' data structures) to unlock new capabilities.

Pinksky is a new 3rd-party photo client for Bluesky that focuses on images, with an interface that resembles Instagram. Pinksky has great front-end design, but the connection to ATProto is could be better supported. At this point I feel that ATProto apps should support the features that make the network decentralised, meaning the app should support accounts that are not hosted by Bluesky, or use a did:web account. Pinksky also has a tab with 'Pinksky only' posts, but those are in fact Bluesky posts with a specific hashtag. Pinksky not using their own Lexicon here feels like a missed opportunity.

Reelo stands out among the apps building a ‘TikTok for Bluesky’ - Sarah Perez/TechCrunch

Reelo is an upcoming video app for ATProto, and one with the goal of building its own platform. It does so by using it's own Lexicon, not that of Bluesky. I explain the more technical side of that choice here. Reelo building it's own platform gives it independence from Bluesky, but also creates significant responsibilities for the single developer: not only will the developer have to build an video app, it will also have to have a moderation system, as Reelo cannot depend on Bluesky's moderation.

Openvibe, a client that combines your Bluesky, Mastodon, Nostr and Threads account into a single feed, has raised 800k USD in outside investment, with Automattic among the investors. Openvibe is an early mover in the space, and it's a name I regularly see pop up when people recommend clients. However, open networks and open APIs means that it is hard to build a competitive moat. Still, most apps are hobby projects, and I'm curious how far Openvibe can push their app with the new funding.

Stellar is a new 3rd-party client for Bluesky that has emoji reactions on posts. It uses Bluemoji as the emoji's for reactions. Bluemoji is a project that allows people to add their own custom emoji's to ATProto, store them on a PDS, and then let other people also use those emoji's. This is what makes Stellar so interesting, it takes an existing project by other developers that incorporates that into their own project. It is this interplay of independent projects that can build of each other that makes open protocols so exciting.

Skylight, the video app for Bluesky, continues to add updates. The app has gotten a lot of attention on Bluesky, and it shows the impact of having the Skylight team do consistent video updates. Another video apps for Bluesky that recently launched is videos for bluesky, by the same developer who made the SoraSNS multi-network client for Bluesky.

Some more ATProto projects that feel like they are more in a prototype phase than a final product phase:

• Ruthub is a Kanban board on ATProto
• Newdin is a sort of wiki-like collaborative timeline?
• Leaflet is an existing tool for collaborative document editing, that is experimenting with adding Bluesky comment support.

And some more links:

• Some community members have been exploring and reviewing what products are currently out there in the ATmosphere (1, 2)
• atproto site allows you to create an HTML page from your ATProto records.

Community

Blacksky is becoming it's own independent company, Blacksky Algorithms Inc. What started as a custom feed for Black people is quickly growing into something much bigger. Blacksky now has multiple code contributors, 8 active moderators, all with a 44k USD yearly budget. Fraser will now be working full-time on Blacksky. The move to incorporate, as well as long-term plans to build Blacksky's own AppView, make it clear that Blacksky is its own place in the ATmosphere. It shows that digital spaces can be build that are not dependent on Bluesky, but can be their own space instead.

The first in-person ATProto conference is planned to take place on March 22 and 23 in Seattle. The conference is organised by some active members of the atproto dev community, and some of the same people who run the regular ATProto Tech Talks. Skyseed, the ATProto venture fund, is also sponsoring the conference. Conferences are a great way to build a more cohesive sense of community among developers, something that I feel has been lacking over on the ActivityPub side. I'm hopeful that regular ATProto conferences can help build a better developer ecosystem for the ATmosphere.

Protocol

PinkSea is now running its own CDN. A true decentralised network means that all the components of the network are decentralised. Some components such as Relays haven gotten the most attention in conversations about decentralisation. CDNs are much less discussed, and virtually all content depends on the CDN of Bluesky. PinkSea is an ATProto platform for drawing and sharing images, and the platform now runs their own CDN that is independent of Bluesky. As far as I know this is the first ATProto platform that has their own CDN, marking another small step towards the network becoming more decentralised.

And some more links:

• Graze has open-sourced it's core algorithm engine.
• A user script to store bookmarks on your PDS in an encrypted form.
• A vanity DID:PLC Miner.
• A script that gives "statistics about which users make how many posts/RTs on average".
• You can just hack on ATProto - Vicky Boykis
• A discussion on Lexicon Versioning.

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to receive the weekly updates directly in your inbox below, and follow this blog @fediversereport.com and my personal account @laurenshof.online.