What's missing from the blog announcement is that on the at protocol, anyone can publish a verification of any account. It is then up to each client to decide w

What's missing from the blog announcement is that on the at protocol, anyone can publish a verification of any account. It is then up to each client to decide which verifiers to display / trust / etc. With that in mind, it seems like bluesky is trying to thread the needle on providing tools for the community to do their own verification (via the protocol) while also making their own client "notable user" friendly (via blessed verifications that show blue checks). I also don't see why it wouldn't be possible for someone to build a labeler that shows verifications from non-bluesky blessed sources. Then community members could subscribe to that labeler to get non-blessed verifications that they choose to show. It wouldn't show up as a blue check but it would still show up on the user's profile in bluesky. It would look something like this existing "verification" labeler that doesn't use the underlying verification feature on the protocol but instead has to maintain the data in a 3rd party store: https://imgur.com/a/tXR4FUu https://imgur.com/a/tXR4FUu Additionally, third-party clients like Pinksky or Skylight could choose to show blue checks or whatever UI for any verifiers they choose. All the data is on the protocol now, so the 3rd party clients wouldn't need to do the verification themselves.