Explainer of atproto cryptography behind Bluesky posts

This article unpacks the cryptographic mechanics underlying the AT Protocol (atproto), explaining how public key cryptography, digital signatures, and elliptic curves authenticate decentralized user data on applications like Bluesky. The author walks through the process of verifying a post by tracing a user's Decentralized Identifier (DID) document, querying Personal Data Servers (PDS), and inspecting CAR archive files and Merkle Search Tree commits. Open article →