- There's no "instances" so I don't know what you mean by this.
- Re: PLC directory, indeed, there is only one of those. I think this is a legit point but it's worth considering the whole point of PLC directory is to be the single minimal stateless open source part that lifts identities out of apps and hostings. PLC governance and maintenance is being spun out into a Swiss organization (https://atproto.com/blog/plc-directory-org). Longer term the idea is for it to have a similar role to ICANN. Here's more on that: https://youtu.be/9z0z-Qu66yM?si=_8Dcw1M3VSKFGZhm&t=493
- Re: full Relays, they're easy/cheap to run, and you can run one yourself if you think the other ones are coordinating with Bluesky and don't trust their decisions. You don't need to depend on something else to do that.
> PLC governance and maintenance is being spun out into a Swiss organization (https://atproto.com/blog/plc-directory-org). Longer term the idea is for it to have a similar role to ICANN.
And since that sounds like a massive centralization problem, how do we have a dozen more of them with independent governance that aren't all controlled by either the same legal entity or by whoever has legal leverage to compel that entity?
Well, I think you also need to consider what PLC is. It’s an open source implementation of an open source spec. The implementation holds zero private state and exposes a verifiable log of operations for audit. There’s ongoing work on mirrors and replicas. Also, its output itself is cryptographically self-verifying.
I get that it’s not ideal but I think it’s worth keeping in mind that there’s not much you can mess up with it other than refusing to update requests. The threat model is very limited and it would immediately be obvious that this is happening, killing the credibility.
I’d also call out that activitypub has the same threat model in the form of ICANN, as it’s also heavily dependent on DNS for identity. I believe these are reasonable trades to make; realistically the alternative is to use a blockchain, which few people are keen to do.