What follows for ATProto, the protocol that lights Bluesky and other applications?

It is easier to create new applications in ATProto, the protocol that drives the Bluesky social network and a growing number of other applications.

In AtmosphereThe ATProto community conference held during the weekend in Seattle, Bluesky's CTO, Paul Frazee, offered attendees a look at what is ahead for the development of the protocol and how that will help developers build more applications to expand the ecosystem in the future.

One of the key additions that will be carried out soon is the support for the authentication standard Oauththat some developers are already testing today, although not in a finished state. With Oauth, developers will be able to create user accounts for users of their application in protocol -based infrastructure, as well as provide tools for session management and visibility in central accounts data.

For consumers and other end users, the addition of Oauth will allow them to log in to applications more easily and safely.

Instead of having to create a specific password of the application in the Bluesky configuration, they could use the Oauth option to log in with Bluesky, similar to the way people register with their account of a technological giant, such as Google or Apple. (There is a debate about how this user interface will be presented, since it is not clear that “Bluesky” should be part of the brand. Bluesky will be one of the many applications in the ATPROTO ecosystem, and the brand should reflect that users are signing with an open social account that works in Bluesky and other applications).

Another change is the ability to publish lexics, or schemes, which define the structure of data records, directly in the protocol. This is important for the development of new types of applications, as developers expand the ecosystem with lexics for things in other types of applications, such as recipes in an application to share recipes or events or locations in a calendar programming application or events, and more.

When an application finds a record that has not seen before, you can resolve the definition of lexicon through a search process similar to DNS to understand how to interrupt that data. Sharing these resources will also allow application developers not to have to spend time defining their own unique lexics, since they can look at those who have already been created by others in the ATProto community.

At the end of this year, the Bluesky team will begin working on ideas on how private shared data will work. This is important because it would allow new features that require private data, such as markers.

Application users also want to take advantage of end -to -end encryption, such as what is in Signal or WhatsApp. Progress on this front, Frazee said, can be helped by the development that is now taking place with Mlsa security layer that is being defended by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

“Lately there has been a lot of interest in the MLS in many different technology batteries, including the web. And I think we can see that with some optimism that the future of encryption for ATPROTO could really accelerate,” said Frazee.

Other developments in the works include a way to improve relays: the part of the AT protocol infrastructure that offers a “fire manga” of network data for other services. By not requiring the relays to maintain complete files, it will become cheaper and more scalable execute their own relief.

The work is also being planned to improve the user's experience around account migrations and support to migrate to Bluesky servers instead of just away from their servers, as you can today.

Techcrunch reported from the atmosphere conference in Seattle.