Nick Gerakines

It takes 3,000 people to contribute $5 a month to pay someone to maintain critical public-good services like this. 3,000 isn't a lot. Neither is $5.

opencollective.com/blacksky

Blacksky - Open Collective

Decentralized social media built for community power, culture, and collective freedom.

🚀 Can't contain my excitement about If This Then AT anymore! What started as a hack-day project at the ATProto NYC Community Hack Day has evolved into something pretty wild. Imagine IFTTT but native to the AT Protocol ecosystem, running on real-time Jetstream events.

Here's a sneak peak 🔍

Cursed polycule

Tracy Chou @triketora.com

nothing says "we care about your privacy" more than sharing your data with 222 partners

I wrote a deep dive on CIDs, the self-describing cryptographic fingerprints behind every record, blob, commit, and Merkle tree node in ATProtocol. Part 1 covers the history, the encoding primitives, and the specific constraints ATProtocol applies.

CIDs: What You Need to Know and Why, Part 1

A deep dive into Content Identifiers, the self-describing cryptographic fingerprints that form the foundation of ATProtocol’s data model.

we can just do things

Introducing at://work: A Job Board That Puts You in Control - Nick's Blog

at://work is a modern job board built on ATProtocol where your profile and job listings are stored on your own Personal Data Server, giving you true ownership of your professional data. As a full AppV...

Wrote about why I went with #atprotocol instead of ActivityPub for Smoke Signal. Probably not all of the hot takes you're looking for, but gives context as to what the project's long-term goals are.

Writing about attested.network, an open spec for decentralized proof of payments on ATProtocol. It builds on what we learned making atprotofans.com. Draft is up and feedback is welcome.

Introducing attested.network: Proof of Payment for ATProtocol

attested.network is an open spec for decentralized proof of payments on ATProtocol, built on what we learned making atprotofans.com. It formalizes the three-party attestation model and opens it up for any app to implement.

Check out at://work, a job board built on #ATProtocol. It's not just another platform, it's professional networking where you actually own your data. Sign in with your ATProtocol handle and your profile lives on your PDS. 🧵

Nick Gerakines @ngerakines.me

we can just do things

Introducing at://work: A Job Board That Puts You in Control - Nick's Blog

at://work is a modern job board built on ATProtocol where your profile and job listings are stored on your own Personal Data Server, giving you true ownership of your professional data. As a full AppV...

I built @lexicon.garden , a discovery platform for ATProtocol lexicon schemas. If you've ever hunted through repos or old posts trying to find schema definitions and documentation, this is for you. #ATProtocol

lexicon.garden

Lexicon Garden - Nick's Blog

Lexicon Garden helps you browse, view, and understand ATProtocol Lexicons.

🚀 Launching QuickDID: Fast, open source handle resolution for ATProtocol! Available now as public infrastructure at quickdid.smokesignal.tools - a drop-in alternative to Bluesky's resolver with intelligent caching. #ATProtocol #OpenSource

Launching QuickDID - Fast, Open Handle Resolution for the AT Protocol - Nick's Blog

QuickDID is a high-performance, open source handle resolution service for the ATmosphere that serves as both public infrastructure at https://quickdid.smokesignal.tools and deployable software under M...

Show me a picture where power is afraid, without telling me that power is afraid.

Permissioned data is here, today, serving communities, creating space and agency. It just wasn’t done by the people you first think about. @blackskyweb.xyz and @transrights.northsky.social build against real, current need. #AtmosphereConf

Great talk @kandake.africa

Wrote about ATProtocol, SMTP, and Chris's blog post about AT-SMS.

AT Protocol and SMTP: When Old Tech Powers New Identity

Exploring how AT Protocol and SMTP can work together to make secure messaging possible by combining 50-year-old email infrastructure with modern cryptographic identity. Building on Chris Boscolo's AT-SMS proposal, this post introduces ideas for adding SMTP services directly to DID documents and leveraging PDS-level cryptographic operations through XRPC methods. The result: verifiable, encrypted communication where messages work like signed JWTs over email, handles prove identity without centralized authorities, and users maintain complete control over their messaging infrastructure. A technical deep-dive into how "boring" technology like SMTP and DNS, combined with AT Protocol's identity primitives, could finally deliver truly portable, private, and permanent messaging.

Good read on Apple's compromise between privacy and performance in search

Homomorphic Encryption in iOS 18

A mathematical miracle enables Apple's servers to process your photos while never knowing anything about them

An emotional “it takes a village” tour by @rudyfraser.com at #ATmosphereConf. It’s a long list, and a lot of people are on it. #BlackSky is what it is because of mutual aid and mutual values. It’s a conduit of people and practices.

I'm excited to release Blue Badge to the wild! This is a lexicon for cryptographically verifiable badges that can be awarded between ATProtocol handles.

More on the Smoke Signal blog: docs.smokesignal.events/blog/blue-ba...

@graze.social (and I) just open sourced AIP, a small but powerful service to ease OAuth session handling in the ATmosphere. It supports both did:plc and did:web identities and simplifies session management for apps using ATProtocol.

GitHub - graze-social/aip: ATmosphere Authentication, Identity, and Permission Proxy

ATmosphere Authentication, Identity, and Permission Proxy - graze-social/aip

I wrote up an article about why ATProtocol (and Smoke Signal) is great for communities. It includes step-by-step instructions for a community organizer to get started and highlights some features that keep people informed and engaged. docs.smokesignal.events/blog/for-com...

New blog post is up! When we talk about controlled data on ATProtocol, we focus on users and who they grant access to. But there's always a third party: the applications that store, relay, and render the data.

Permissioned data is a love triangle

Permissioned data is a love triangle between the user, the identities they grant permissions to, and the applications everyone uses to view controlled data. We don't need to change or reinvent the protocol to have it, because ATProtocol already supports it.

ATProtocol itself is great, and I think people generally understand the value of owning your data as it is stored in your PDS. What I think doesn't get enough attention is that your PDS is also your source of identity with OAuth, and that really is game-changing.

Grateful to announce that Bluesky Social PBC has awarded me a small grant to continue building in the ATProtocol ecosystem!

Building decentralized infrastructure is a team effort. Thankful to everyone who has contributed directly and indirectly.

Excited to keep shipping. 🚀

AIP: OAuth 2.0/2.1 + OpenID Connect gateway for ATProtocol. Now you can use your existing tools, apps, and SDKs with your ATProtocol identity. One of the ATmosphere’s rough edges just got a lot smoother.

Hello! I'm pleased to announce github.com/astrenoxcoop..., a configurable feed generator. This is the system behind @smokesignal.events feeds.

GitHub - astrenoxcoop/supercell: A lightweight and configurable atproto feed generator.

A lightweight and configurable atproto feed generator. - astrenoxcoop/supercell

Read through atproto proposal-0016 and took some notes on important points that I think are worth sharing and talking about.

Reading Proposal 0016: What atproto’s “Permissioned Data” Actually Does