Viability of serving non‑Bluesky applications via Bluesky infrastructure at scale

Ascertain whether the Bluesky Relay and Firehose can continue to index and re‑publish content produced by AT Protocol applications that are not the Bluesky app (for example, WhiteWind records stored in user repositories under non‑app.bsky lexicons) in a viable manner as those external applications grow, including capacity, performance, and operational impacts on the Relay and AppView components.

Background

Bluesky is built on the AT Protocol, which allows third-party applications to store records in user repositories under their own lexicons. The Bluesky Relay (Firehose) currently indexes and disseminates these records, enabling other AppViews to process and display them.

The paper identifies early examples such as WhiteWind and notes that the current volume of non‑Bluesky content is small, resulting in limited infrastructure impact. The authors explicitly state uncertainty about whether using Bluesky’s existing infrastructure to serve non‑Bluesky applications will remain viable as those applications scale.