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This protocol has the potential to turn research into an open conversation — not a gated archive with peaks of occasional information releases. It would protect ownership, credit, and integrity while 100X the time to the next big discovery or paradigm shift. (A new home/model for preprints?)

Publishing atomically through the AT Protocol could let researchers build and share work across their entire careers — transparently, collaboratively, and safely — without fear of being scooped or losing rights. (A viable replacement for ORCID?)

More than any emergent tech I’ve seen in the past decade, I believe the AT Protocol has the right foundational elements to make this real: open standards, interoperability, collaboration, and individual ownership, all in the DNA.

Sorry about the obvious question, but what's AT Protocol and why is that a huge opportunity?

Great question. #ATproto is the open, decentralised social web protocol that powers Bluesky. It’s built around a portable identity, personal data servers (PDS) where *all* *my* stuff is stored, and “lexicons” (definition of any “thing” that can be written/read by anyone/anything on the network).

A “book” lexicon has a title, author, ISBN, date published, cover art, license, and content… so anyone could create/sell/share/read it on AT. The data stays *in the author’s PDS*. Authors, publishers, book reviews, book collections, licenses, etc could also be defined and reused widely.

Atomic, continuous publishing is exactly what we’re building at @curvenote.com and @continuous.foundation! Totally the future. But will be a huge norm shift for scientists from spending two years writing one big paper that then takes two more years to publish.