iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 05/02/2026

Do you think we can build a better web? Im excited to share FOSDEM presentation on Seed Hypermedia! youtu.be/3gI7-h0wAE8

youtu.be

Digital Sovereignty with Seed Hypermedia (FOSDEM 2026)

YouTube video by Seed Hypermedia

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 31/01/2026

“Open Source has Always been Political” ❤️❤️❤️ @fosdem.org

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 30/01/2026

Two days until my @seed.hyper.media talk at FOSDEM So proud of what the team has been cooking up recently!

Eric with SeedHypermedia presentation on laptop

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 28/01/2026

You'd be surprised how few people see any problems with this slide:

The Web Today: shows a bunch of people connected to centralized platforms like Instagram, X, and Bluesky

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 28/01/2026

You see my handle here is "@eric.vicenti.net" So you'd think: oh this is a sovereign identity! Then you inspect it and see that, nah, that domain is just pointing to Bluesky's identity server (PLC) SAD!

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 28/01/2026

DID is a great concept ("Decentralized Identifiers") But its a shame that the most common DID (the one used by Bluesky) is did:plc. And the PLC is centralized Ironic that the most popular decentralized identifier is centralized.

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 23/01/2026

If this interests you, check out my full article that I authored with Claude: eric.vicenti.net/posts/dream-...

eric.vicenti.net

The Meaning Machine: A Dream for Universal Language

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 23/01/2026

This is not a probabilistic language model, this is the formal counterpart. Before the advent of the LLM, this wouldn’t be possible to develop. And it won’t succeed without widespread community adoption- but I can dare to dream.

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 23/01/2026

We need language tools that capture the diversity of dialects, jargons, community references, and inside jokes. From private language to broadcasted concepts- our tooling can support this.

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 23/01/2026

It is possible to encode and embrace the ambiguity and clarity that different languages provide- providing tools to pack and unpack literary devices. Language is messy and beautiful, and you can almost always use more words to properly share cultural context across boundaries.

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 23/01/2026

We could dismantle the barrier between cultures, and allow humanity to unlock the raw power of their computers- without technical knowledge. So much human knowledge is inaccessible without the right language: science, medical practices, legalese, vague diplomacy.

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 23/01/2026

A formal language would unlock solid and unambiguous translation between human languages. And would enable universal access to programming languages.

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 23/01/2026

I believe that Language is humanity's first technology. The LLM is a revolution but it’s only the first half- it is probabilistic and uncertain. To address the other half: we need to develop a universal formal language!

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Reposted by Eric Vicenti

Open Local First @localfirst.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Eric Vicenti will be talking about @seed.hyper.media : The Future of Digital Sovereignty, at @fosdem.org '26 #Local-First & #CRDTs devroom! Come listen to the 25 speakers on 1st Feb, from 9:00. It is free! more details: openlocalfirst.org/schedules/#2...

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 25/11/2025

And it depends on context. For applications we are forced to use, standardization is good. But for art? Probably not!

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 25/11/2025

If the standard was imposed long enough, maybe SQLite wouldn’t have happened and we’d be stuck using folders of XML!

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 25/11/2025

Interesting q! These days, for example, SQLite is sort of the status-quo for local app storage. But, what extensions are allowed in such a standard? Maybe useful extensions wouldn’t have been created if there was a legal compliance risk.

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/11/2025

100% agree on file system access and open formats However, the expectation for app developers to conform to “ubiquitous” formats is unrealistic, and this would suppress innovation

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 25/06/2025

Awesome! Is there a guide for using did:web on my own PDS? By default it seems to be using did:plc and I got stuck trying to set up my own identity

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/06/2025

Oh, thats's awesome! I thought that: 1. I would loose/replace my identity if I did that 2. Bluesky doesn't talk with random self-hosted PDSs, so my sovereign content would be invisible to bsky users Would be sweet to have ID independence while staying connected to this network. I'll try it!

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/06/2025

I apologize for saying "disinformation". It was too harsh, because I don't believe you are intending to spread wrong information Also, AtProto does offer some forms of decentralized identity! You said Bluesky. Which, with my limited understanding, does not 😢

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/06/2025

What was the other inaccurate comment that I made? Boris confirmed that the plc is centralized. But hey, I'm often wrong, and I'm constantly learning!

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/06/2025

I'd LOVE to be wrong on this. I'm a huge supporter of any sovereign/decentralized identity system for the web. In my first post I accidentally said that users don't "own their keys" on bksy. I meant to say they don't own their identity, because you claimed that bsky has decentralized ID

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/06/2025

Sorry for bothering you with this, Boris 😅 I was pretty sure that the bluesky PDS holds a rotation key, as discussed here: github.com/bluesky-soci... Also I'm not sure how the "lost password" workflow (email validation) would possibly work if the bsky service can't rekey my identity

github.com

How to edit `did:plc` rotation keys · bluesky-social atproto · Discussion #3366

I have migrated my Bluesky handle rekmarks.com to my own PDS. I am trying to replace one of its rotation keys. Here's what I observe: I check the rotation keys returned by com.atproto.identity.getR...

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/06/2025

The ICANN-governed DNS already exists- already distributed across every nation. To me it feels like this whole mess could have been avoided if bsky used did:web identities (or better, did:dns) The auditing+tamper-resistance features of the ledger can be implemented in a decentralized way, right?!

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/06/2025

The worst part is that Bluesky pretends that you get a sovereign ID when you add your own domain, but it is just a proxy to the centralized did:plc No wonder people are confused!

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/06/2025

But.. who owns the identity? Bluesky does, because they can re-key people. It's definitely an admirable intent to decentralize one day. But clearly people are thinking Bluesky already offers sovereign identities. Hence the "disinformation"

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 21/06/2025

This feels like disinformation to me. Bluesky uses did:plc which is highly centralized I’d love to be proven wrong, because the world desperately needs a decentralized identity system I’m really hoping that Bluesky sees the light and allows users to actually own their keys

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 11/06/2025

So Zooko eventually got it right, but wikipedia (and therefore everybody) kind of missed it. Interestingly, you patched the triangle differently, by adding "Globally unique" Anyways, thanks for indulging my rabbit hole!

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 11/06/2025

The 2002 version said: "Decentralized, Secure, Human-Memorizable" and this is a much better description of the triangle! Using web of trust and the techniques in your paper, we can reach "Human meaningful" with security and decentralization. But the identity is still not Human Memorizable 😁

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 11/06/2025

Actually I think the biggest fault lies with Wikipedia editors, who quoted "Human meaningful, decentralized, secure" This is from the original publication by Zooko which says at the top: "Please do not propagate this information widely yet. I'm still working on it." But there is a newer version! 😂

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 10/06/2025

It’s beautiful! Animating the border radius is a great touch

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 10/06/2025

Which means the gateway server doesn't even need to be online for the gateway/https URLs to work in the app, as long as you have peers who can provide the content.

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 10/06/2025

Consider yourself lucky that it doesn't have an app with mandatory SaaS + subscription model, like 8sleep or other enshittified appliances 😅

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 10/06/2025

I pretty much agree! But we could maybe introduce one extra step in the onboarding where the user selects a gateway server and could even choose "no gateway", so p2p URLs would be exposed instead of the https-ified ones. But the app already converts gateway URLs to native p2p URLs under the hood...

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 10/06/2025

This post by @dustyweb.bsky.social et al is an absolute banger files.spritely.institute/papers/imple... It has been a major inspiration for our implementation of "web of trust" in @seed.hyper.media Although, there is a slight mis-representation of Zooko's triangle. I should write about this...

files.spritely.institute

Implementation of a Petnames System in an existing chat application

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 10/06/2025

We built a decentralized publishing app with a UX that is so good, its not immediately obvious that our server is optional. Do we add friction to the UI that helps users realize this? Or should we address this in our communication/marketing strategy?

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 04/06/2025

There must be a better way 😅

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 04/06/2025

Hah! I realized that I only use the dock for one thing: to move the cmd-tab app switcher to a different screen (because it always appears in the window where you have most recently used the dock 🥴)

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 29/04/2025

The crazy part is how common IG is for messaging in Europe (and probably other places 😅) So you’re forced to endure horrible spam notifs if you want to see when your friends message you

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 25/04/2025

Oh that’s cool, I couldn’t find this feature before when I was looking for it.

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 25/04/2025

What is a self-hosted user? Like if you run your own PDS? How do you connect the bsky client app to your own PDS? I thought bsky forces you on to their servers?

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 25/04/2025

The annoying part is that bsky is almost decentralized.. let me add other servers from the app, and let’s move away from did:plc

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Reposted by Eric Vicenti

Ricardo J. Méndez @ricardo.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

The ongoing misunderstanding about Bluesky's architecture allowing for decentralization meaning it is unstoppable has me thinking a lot about mutualism. numergent.com/2025-04/Unst...

numergent.com

Unstoppability depends on mutual aid

If you want a system to be censorship resistant, it means that it needs to be able to route around attempts to silence you. For that to happen you need others to help relay your requests and data, or

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Eric Vicenti @eric.vicenti.net · 16/04/2025

Ok ok, enough joking around. At least @atproto.com is decentralized As long as you ignore the centralization that is baked right into the protocol 😂

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