It seems to me that a lot of the problems discussed in this thread (it's using a new protocol that doesn't work with existing tools, it uses crypto, handles auth in the protocol, server can goes down) are just frustrations that don't have to do with the core innovation that Bluesky promises to deliver, and are instead confusing the AT protocol to be another ActivityPub-related protocol, rather than something completely different. In fact, it misses that having pull-based indexes is part of the idea of separating data publication vs. data curation. Yes, invite codes are kind of a weird thing to shove so deep into the protocol but sometimes these kinds of things are necessary to bootstrap a social network, and become relatively unimportant in the long term.
But on the other hand, the AT protocol is not all what it seems either. It's fundamentally not possible to do what they promise unless there is some kind of synchronization point where your most up-to-date identity can be searched. The documentation goes on extensively about the format of DIDs and the fact that there _is_ a resolution scheme, but it fails to mention that this resolution is being done by Bluesky themselves, and is not planned to expand into something that others can control. As a decentralized protocol, you would expect this to be something DNS-based, or if you really wanted something more peer-to-peer, DHT lookup, or at the worst case, a distributed blockchain. Seeing as this is a fundamental protocol-level change, the fact that they're rolling with the current approach makes me believe they will not be changing this in the near future. Bluesky is just converting one problem into another.
But on the other hand, the AT protocol is not all what it seems either. It's fundamentally not possible to do what they promise unless there is some kind of synchronization point where your most up-to-date identity can be searched. The documentation goes on extensively about the format of DIDs and the fact that there _is_ a resolution scheme, but it fails to mention that this resolution is being done by Bluesky themselves, and is not planned to expand into something that others can control. As a decentralized protocol, you would expect this to be something DNS-based, or if you really wanted something more peer-to-peer, DHT lookup, or at the worst case, a distributed blockchain. Seeing as this is a fundamental protocol-level change, the fact that they're rolling with the current approach makes me believe they will not be changing this in the near future. Bluesky is just converting one problem into another.