@padraig I think the fact BSky is centralized is why they were more successful at capturing the twitter crowd.
Their verification is based on proving you own a domain, and I found a verge article from Feb that says they've allowing people to self-host their own account data, but they do seem to be approaching the fediverse with a more threads-like "our silo first" priority.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/22/24080334/bluesky-self-hosting-servers-data-federated