Decentralisation and blogging on atproto

When people talk about decentralisation in the atproto ecosystem, the conversation almost always centres on Bluesky. Conversations on decentralisation are messy at the best of times, but the strong focus on Bluesky and microblogging make it even more complicated. Decentralisation describes two different things at once: a technical architecture for how networks are structured, and the actual behaviour of people using those networks. Because Bluesky is so central to atproto, the social dynamics of hosting >99.9% overwhelm any technical dynamics that atproto provides regarding decentralisation.

Blogging platforms like Leaflet and WhiteWind offer another lens for understanding decentralisation and atproto. The blogging and writing platforms built on atproto operate on a much smaller scale, there are multiple distinct players in the space. None of these players dominate the field in the way that Bluesky dominates the microblogging side of atproto. By examining how these different platforms interact with each other, we can see some of the decentralisation dynamics of atproto that are harder to see by looking at Bluesky.

The current state of long-form writing and publishing

The first player on the scene was WhiteWind, which was also the first major alternative project on atproto besides Bluesky, and launched in early 2024. The platform offers a simple markdown-based editor, a homepage that shows popular and most recent articles published using WhiteWind. There are also some integrations with Bluesky, with Bluesky posts that talk about the article visible below it.

The developer for WhiteWind however has stopped further work on the platform for a while now, leaving the space open for other writing and blogging platforms.

Leaflet is a blogging and publishing platform that started development in the summer of 2024. Only in May 2025 did the platform become really integrated with atproto. In the half year since, Leaflet has quickly become the most popular blogging platform on atproto, and it is actively seeing further development. Leaflet is a block-based editor, that does not use markdown. Leaflet is now also starting to move towards the social side of blogging, with its own comment section (that exists outside of Bluesky), a reader feed that shows all recently published Leaflet posts, and a discovery page for finding other Leaflets.

What I find noteworthy about Leaflet is how quickly it is managing to find a user base of early adopters that is not tech people talking about the tech itself (like yours truly). Of the 20 Leaflets that were published in the last 24 hours, 3 were about atproto itself. Instead there are posts about football, politics, short stories, personal diary blogs, or overviews on how someone is putting a film camera on a boat. That many the blogs talk about things other than tech is a very healthy sign for the future of Leaflet.

PiPup is a recently launched platform for long-form writing on atproto, that focuses creating blogs with Markdown. It supports a wide variety of specialised tools, from creating interactive math charts to sharing music with ABC notation and code syntax highlighting. The platform launched with a tool to convert WhiteWind posts to PiPup posts. It also has a reader feed, but where the Leaflet reader feed only shows posts made on Leaflet, PiPup's feed shows posts made with WhiteWind, Leaflet and PiPup.

Another example of a writing and blogging app that's currently in development and that looks very promising is Offprint. Their current work can be seen here. Offprint also explicitly mentions monetisation as part of their platform, advertising Offprint as "Write, monetize, and own your audience without the middleman." Pckt.blog is blogging platform that is currently working on atproto integration. Weaver is another long-form writing platform for atproto that is currently in development, and has gotten a grant by Graze for the work.

On decentralisation and interoperability

Together, the various long-form writing apps create a new market for blogging on atproto, with a very different dynamic between them. Instead of one company that works on the protocol and also hosts virtually all users, there are multiple competitors all building in the same space. The Apps act more as collaborators than as competitors however. It gives some insight in what decentralisation and interoperability on atproto actually looks like when there are multiple different apps all working towards the same objective, without one company being overwhelmingly dominant. Some observations:

I continue to think that the field of blogging and long-form writing on atproto is the place with the most potential for growth of the atproto network, and there is a ton of exciting experimentation and building happening in the space. I'm curious to see how this will further develop.