The Blue Sky team celebrated an incredible feat by posting that the decentralized (more on that later) app had reached 40 million users.

Powered by the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (also known as ATProto) & nicknamed the Atmosphere by Bluesky, it appears that people are flocking towards the decentralized protocol over the other option, which is powered by ActivityPub (nicknamed the Fediverse).

Isn’t Bluesky A Part Of The Fediverse‽

Okay, although some may argue that Bluesky is a part of the Fediverse, thanks to handy bridges that help both communicate with each other.

Truthfully, Bluesky is as distant from the Fediverse as phone numbers are to email (note: yes, emails & phone numbers can communicate with each other, but they are very different protocols).

Even Bluesky does not view itself as part of the overall Fediverse, but instead refers to its community as the Atmosphere to distinguish itself from ActivityPub-powered sites within the Fediverse.

Before we dive into what we’re up to, let’s take a moment to celebrate what’s happening in the Atmosphere. Our little network is really starting to hit its stride. The energy is incredible and growing by the day! We’re seeing new projects pop up constantly, and there’s a new level of maturity across the board.

What’s really amazing is watching developers help other developers. Development is happening over on Tangled. Devs are sharing updates through Leaflet. Projects like Slices, Microcosm, PDSls, and Graze are making it easier for everyone to build. The AT Protocol Community just announced the second AtmosphereConf this March in Vancouver. This is what decentralized development looks like. Remember: on an open protocol we can just do things.

— Bluesky Developer Blog

Although technically decentralized, like ActivityPub-powered sites, Bluesky’s embrace of decentralization via Atmosphere is significantly softer compared to the Fediverse.

Hard decentralization refers to the emergence of a resilient and multi-stakeholder Atmosphere that relies less on Bluesky PBC’s existence. There’s some overlap with the other two goals here. Improving things like sync make it easier to run alternate infrastructure like Relays and Appviews, and our governance work should help build confidence that the protocol is a genuine public good that’s larger than Bluesky. […]

The decentralization guarantees of AT come from the locked-open substrate of data hosted by Personal Data Servers (PDSes). One of our current goals to increase the resilience of the network is to encourage more non-Bluesky PDS hosting.

— Bluesky Developer Blog

Now that it is clear the Atmosphere differs from the Fediverse, many are likely wondering if the former is expanding faster than the latter.

Decentralized Statistics (Atmosphere Versus Fediverse)

As mentioned before, Bluesky achieved a milestone by reaching 40 million users. Currently, there is no single site that showcases the total number of users throughout the Atmosphere, so this (more or less) will be an apples versus oranges comparison against the Fediverse overall.

Bluesky is the flagship for the Atmosphere, & their standalone stats are impressive nonetheless. As far as Fediverse stats go, they will be sourced from the Fediverse Observer by @alpacasncats, as his site includes most ActivityPub-powered sites.

Note: Threads stats are not included by Fediverse Observer (which will be discussed below), while Minds (a controversial site) will be featured in parentheses as most aggregate sites refuse to count their stats due to the site’s controversial content. Minds stats were reported by Fortune.

Bluesky Stats will be sourced from BlueFacts & Stats for Bluesky by Jaz, as they provide clearer statistics regarding Bluesky’s growth.

• Total Users: Bluesky: 40,027,311 | Fediverse: 16,809,247 (+ 5 million from Minds)
• Monthly Active Users: Bluesky: 5,334,902 | Fediverse: 909,842 (+ 500,000 from Minds)
• Daily Active Users: Bluesky: 1,430,329 | Fediverse: Unclear

Just comparing Bluesky (the flagship of the Atmosphere) alone against the Fediverse, it appears as if adoption of the Authenticated Transfer Protocol is outpacing ActivityPub.

This might explain why high profile individuals are embracing Bluesky over the Fediverse, including one politician who is scorned by folks within the Atmosphere.

Upon first glance, the Atmosphere appears to be expanding faster than the Fediverse, based on the publicly available data. However, one company has (frustratingly) kept its Fediverse stats secret, one that (for better or worse) could shape the future of decentralized networks.

The Meta Monster Cometh

Threads by Meta is part of the Fediverse & due to its size, it will likely be one of the first ActivityPub platforms that most people encounter online.

According to @mosseri (who leads Instagram), Threads boasts over 400 million monthly active users, of which 150 million are active daily.

While those stats are impressive, it is still unclear how many of those users have activated ActivityPub on their accounts, & @threads has declined to release statistics on how many users have turned on Fediverse sharing on their platform.

Hopefully, @conno_r (the current leader at Threads) will be more forthcoming when it comes to Fediverse user stats, as that would help determine how many people are a part of the ActivityPub decentralized social network.

Is Atmosphere Greater Than The Fediverse‽

Currently, the Atmosphere’s strength depends on its flagship site, Bluesky, & for now, it is clearly outpacing the Fediverse overall.

However, the bottleneck for the Atmosphere is Bluesky, so unless other Personal Data Servers (aka PDS) come online with their own Relays (along with millions of users), the protocol will thrive or die on Bluesky’s site.

While smaller, the Fediverse‘s advantage lies in the number of diverse & significant platforms that have adopted ActivityPub. This includes:

• WordPress (via the ActivityPub plugin created by @pfefferle) which may boast around 500 million active websites.
• Threads (by Meta) which currently boasts over 400 million monthly active users (aka MAU). They are still beta testing Fediverse sharing on their site although it is available to turn on for most users
• Flipboard (founded by @mike) who boasts over 145 million MAU (note: they are beta testing ActivityPub on a limited number of accounts)
• Mastodon (created by @Gargron) which boasts around 671,000 MAU (note: a variant or fork of the software powers President Donald Trump’s Truth Social site, although Fediverse sharing is turned off—for now).
• Minds (created by @ottman & @john), a controversial site boasting over 500,000 MAU (note: it is unclear how many servers use their software beyond the flagship site).
• Pixelfed (created by @dansup) which boasts over 100,000 MAU & is arguably one of the best designed Fediverse sites online.

These six sites &/or software platforms have maintained large, active user bases & boast official mobile apps on Apple (iOS & iPadOS) & Android (the latter is significant for any site desiring to go mainstream amongst the masses).

A Decentralized Conclusion

The decentralized future has yet to be determined, although if one were to wager on which protocol would become the global standard, the odds favor the Fediverse.

The toughest barrier for advocates of ActivityPub is convincing users on established platforms (primarily WordPress & Threads) to either install a plugin or enable Fediverse sharing for their account.

Convincing celebrities, politicians, large organizations, businesses, local groups, religious institutions, sports organizations, etcetera, to embrace the Fediverse is more of an advocacy issue rather than a technical problem.

The Atmosphere’s biggest hurdle is both technical & promotional, as they are still in the early stages of simplifying their setup to make it easier for individuals & companies to use.

Regardless of which decentralized platform dominates in the future, the world overall needs social networks that are not owned & operated by corporate giants headquartered in a few countries.

The world needs a diversity of opinions online to solve a host of complex global problems, & the best way to achieve that is to allow everyone to have their own voice, on their own terms, without fear of being silenced due to geopolitical or corporate politics.