There’s some conversation in the Atmosphere right now about how we turn @atproto.com projects into sustainable businesses. One of the biggest opportunities is sitting right in front of us: give publishers back the audience development business they spent the last 20 years outsourcing to platforms.
Aug 12, 2026 at 2:15 PM
Ideas on a Financially Sustainable Atproto | Alex | Offprint
Explore a new funding model for Atproto that moves beyond grants and VC. Discover how StratosFund enables sustainable, community-driven open-source development.
Ricochet Media (@ricochetmedia.bsky.social)
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What can news publishers learn from creators? Interview with Simon Owens
Don't leave money on the table and think outside the box about business models
Towards Sustainable Moderation for 3rd Party ATProto Development
I had the chance to chat with Ronen and Wesley from semble.so at the ATProto Boston meetup last week. They mentioned to me that a topic of discussion among non-Bluesky ATProto developers in Montreal was a growing recognition that they would need to start doing moderation on their services sooner rather than later. I was very quickly able to demonstrate that labeling third party lexicons was fairly simple. That said, I think tooling is the easy part—between larger organizations like Roost and Z...
Scott Galloway - The Four - What To Do
Another creator workshop! All things monetization. Talking about @sprk.so and the Atmosphere with creators well versed with making a career in social media. sprk.so/post/did:plc:qed67d2sst5xqsbu…
Another creator workshop! All things monetization. Talking about @s... | Spark
sprk.soA brief 🧵 for all outside the #atproto bubble on why, from a digital industrial policy perspective, this step is deeply bewildering. There's @eurosky.social – open source, non-profit, fully aligned with the EU's open source strategy. It provides all that W has, & more. And yet, the Commission...
European Commission
We have now joined W, a new European social media network. We’re present on 15+ platforms, and are especially happy to join one based in Europe and with the ambition to foster open and safer online conversations. Keep the conversation going - whether from W, Bluesky or other compatible apps.
For anyone building new apps and tools on ATproto that are … 🌐 on the Open Web 🌱 past the prototype stage ✨ reimagining the social internet New_ Public, @publicspaces.net and @waag.org are investing up to €10,000 in alternatives to Big Tech Learn more, share, or apply by May 1st newpublic.org/OSA
Open Social Awards | New_ Public
newpublic.orgI'd like to see some coordination in the open source community to respond to this. The outcome could shape significant funding and strategic moves. Off the top of my head, there's a few things that I'd like to see in a new European open source strategy. 🧵
Maximilian Henning
The @ec.europa.eu will soon present “a combination of funding and policy measures” to support European open source projects in becoming commercially viable alternatives to proprietary US tech. Read my article at @euractiv.com: euractiv.com/news/commission-wants-to-comm…
if any of said open source communities or atproto companies would like to have someone design merch + manage a shop while funding an ecomm-on-atproto experiment, my dms are open! ideal partners would have deep open source roots, believe atproto is the future, and want rad, gender-inclusive merch ✌️
Hey atproto builders, what if we got together to talk about the funding environment and how we sustainably grow our products and orgs? If you're interested in a meeting, add your info here! (context cont'd ⬇️)
Airtable | Everyone's app platform
airtable.comwelcome to the atproto.garden! 🐛 it's a community space for creators of all types to organize around making financially sustainable projects on the AT Protocol... talk shop about branding, business, economic models, etc. it's not just for devs!! hosted on @roomy.chat (a new atproto app!)
dame
i'm thinking about making a community space for AT Protocol creators, builders, artists, etc who are trying to find a sustainable path to monetization/funding for their atproto-based/powered projects it seems like a lot of us are in the same boat and sharing info/experiences might be good?
Great post! There is a clear parallel to how the @atproto.science ecosystem can disrupt the extractive science publishing industry & bring on millions of researchers with a new cooperative research stack. The system is ripe for disruption - see also @edhagen.net's post in the thread linked below >
Joe Basser
Who wants to make money in the Atmosphere? 🙋♂️
I am interested in surfacing people and organizations who are available for paid consulting around atproto. Ideally the community can help vouch for folks as interest grows.
Sifa ID 🪿
Hey! @bmann.ca and @trezy.codes are interested in a list of people that are available to do consulting / contracting work on ATproto, and we can share that list with companies that need you. If you want to appear on this list: 👇️
Interesting conversation exploring the future of atproto sustainability!
JP
I want people to be comfortable paying for an atproto account (ie. space on a PDS) It’s the bedrock of everything we’re building; if it’s not funded it’ll get squeezed in ways that are bad for users (hi Gmail) We should normalise having (very cheap) paid-tier PDS accounts on the services we build
I wonder if having some kind of "atproto Foundation" would help with fundraising for the broader atmosphere? Currently there is no easy way to invest in the atmosphere so would-be funders default to bsky cc @ecosystemaction.com
Erin Kissane
Knight Foundation's kind of an exception here, tbh, and has a specific interest that's different from the VCs—and also a specific connection into the protocol. I'd love to see them send money to a slew of atmosphere projects and I wouldn't be super surprised if they did.
