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Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 20-Apr-2026 05:25:24 JST Paul Cantrell

Interesting!
(Since I am a person with “professor” in their bio, I guess I should add a disclaimer: I haven’t vetted or even understood this analysis myself; the boost is just to say that I just think it’s an interesting line of thought, and am glad folks like Christine are paying attention to these questions.) https://social.coop/@cwebber/116432745089873559
In conversation about a month ago from hachyderm.io permalink
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  Christine Lemmer-Webber (@cwebber@social.coop)
  
  from Christine Lemmer-Webber
  
  This is interesting. In my blogposts analyzing ATproto I had compared the shared heap vs message passing from a CS perspective https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/ Ian Preston of Peergos did the actual formal mathematical proof of the incentive structure: https://peergos.net/secret/z59vuwzfFDp45jmsA6Wj2jc9hemCjB4JJHB81iosJsA9GAVRtkbrqBs/1024927538#%7B%22app%22:%22markup%22%2c%22path%22:%22ianopolous/docs%22%2c%22args%22:%7B%22filename%22:%22social-scaling.note%22%7D%2c%22writable%22:false%2c%22secretLink%22:true%2c%22linkpassword%22:%22UfAQURKSTTmM%22%2c%22open%22:true%7D > It is interesting that this is independent of N. Let's say you have 1000 servers, and 1000 followers per user. Then the shared heap model uses about the same network bandwidth. With a small number of servers SH can be better, with many servers AP is better. > The conclusion is that the shared-heap model builds in a structural incentive to keep M small, and thus has a natural centralizing force. Conversely there is an incentive in AP to keep F small. Ie, there is a mathematical incentive in ATproto to only have a few large players.
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  Jeff Miller (orange hatband) (jmeowmeow@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 20-Apr-2026 05:45:08 JST Jeff Miller (orange hatband)
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  @inthehands I love cases where fundamental computer science concepts get used to examine and compare choices, like how the design of ATProto (informed by Twitter, undoubtedly) compares to the design of ActivityPub federation for participants.
  I imagine the Blacksky group (partly separate ATProto stack) has a very concrete feel for the comparison.
  
  In conversation about a month ago permalink

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