Introducing the Atmosphere Community Cooperative
In 2024, a few people working in the AT Protocol ecosystem—the Atmosphere—founded the AT Protocol Community Fund to produce the first AtmosphereConf, provide community forums for developers and other people working on the ecosystem, and administer micro-grants for Atmospheric projects.
As we look toward the third AtmosphereConf in 2027, we’re happy to announce that we’re transforming into a cooperative dedicated to supporting the health, growth, and stability of the Atmosphere.
This is the first post from the Atmosphere Community Cooperative, a new global cooperative based in Canada that is governed by and for the community, for the good of the ecosystem and the people inside it.
Continuity & change
In our new form, we’ll continue to convene in-person/hybrid events to gather people in the ecosystem and help us skill up together, including the 2027 conference in Amsterdam in late April/early May of 2027. Boris Mann will again lead the conference, with co-lead Guido Jansen in Amsterdam, Ms Boba as our web lead, and support from Moat Studio.
We’ll also keep providing a community venue for collaboration, especially on community-wide standards and interoperability—with community governance and increased attention to usability and coherence. And we plan to reopen small grant programs under the guidance of specific circles (working groups) within the co-op.
The biggest change is the community ownership and control that the cooperative affords. Among other things, it means that the co-op can serve as a community-governed home for shared intellectual property (for us, this is things like branding, domain names, and legal ownership of open code) that might otherwise remain in the control of private companies.
What the co-op will do
Our first project—Login with Atmosphere—is now underway, with Evelyn Osman, Principal at Eskahlay Community Technology, leading the project circle with a small team focused on user research, branding, and UI/code recommendations for a standardized, user-friendly approach to atproto-powered logins.
We also have a whole slate of new proposals, which we look forward to sharing with our membership as it forms, including:
- incubating network co-ops/entities
- working with and learning from other co-ops and collectives and nonprofits
- collaboratively developing projects within the co-op, and sharing their benefits
- advocating for global policy that supports the Atmosphere ecosystem
- new shared infrastructure to support experimental development
Who can join?
Membership in the co-op will be open to all who will benefit from our services and share in the responsibilities of the work at hand—including the construction of healthy and respectful gathering places, online and off.
Our members will include people and institutions who build and create on the protocol, including those working on:
- apps and services
- communities and organizations
- trust and safety
- discovery/curation
- infrastructure
- lexicons and community standards
- network policy
…and on the art, games, journalism, and uncountable other good things that are already bubbling in the Atmosphere’s early years.
Self-assembly is underway
We’ve filed the paperwork to become a co-op, but there’s a lot of work to do before we can get off the ground and practice community self-governance according to international co-op principles.
To support this formative work, we—the people who contributed to previous iterations of the Community Fund—have appointed a three-person board. We’re deeply grateful to Dawn Walker (CoSocial), Fig Schleihauf (Microcosm), and Bryan Newbold (Bluesky) for agreeing to act as our initial board and shepherd our new cooperative until our governance framework and membership processes are created.
As chair of the Governance Design project circle, Erin Kissane is working with a group of community participants from across the Atmosphere to design governance structures that build accountability, democratic participation, and balance of power into the foundations of the new co-op. The members of the governance circle are board member Anuj Ahooja (A New Social), Chad Kohalyk (Protocols for Publishers), Bryan Newbold, Evelyn Osman (Eskahlay, Northsky), Marisa Rando (Blacksky), and Ivan Sigal (Modal Foundation).
Meanwhile, Boris Mann, Chad Kohalyk, and Ms. Boba are coordinating the many workstreams currently underway and coordinating the legal work involved in establishing the co-op. Thanks also to Ted Han and Nick Gerakines, who co-led earlier iterations of AtmosphereConf and the AT Protocol Community Fund, who continue to advise us.
We’ll have a lot more to say about all the above work over the next few months.
What happens next
We’re designing our membership processes now, and will continue to consult with people around the ecosystem and in co-ops outside the Atmosphere to deepen and validate our research and test our proposals.
In the spring of 2027, we intend to hold an Annual General Meeting at AtmosphereConf to pass the new bylaws and rules we’ve created together, including the rules for electing our first long-term board. Shortly after that, we’ll elect our first long-term board and get to work on the next slate of projects. (Our initial board members will be eligible for consideration as members of the next board, should they wish to be.)
To get notified when we launch member sign-ups and roll out new plans, get on our list and/or join the forum.
We can just do things, together.