the bluesky team thinks their technical work on The Protocol™ will sell itself, but actually bluesky is the only marketing they have and right now it's toxic af. nobody will want to use the protocol.

Even if federation happens, this instance we are all using now that we call bluesky will still be the canonical reference from which the protocol will be judged. But beyond that, they also have a responsibility to lead by example, modeling best practices for others who wish to run instances