We’re so excited to announce the first two winners of the Graze Grants round!

SkyShrooms SkyShrooms is a whimsical mushroom-themed trading card and battle game built on ATproto from business goose. Players collect and battle with cards issued by a trusted authority and it’s all designed to be extensible, so other creators can build their own games on the same system.

With plans to support user-submitted artwork, open lexicons, and tools for becoming your own “card issuer,” SkyShrooms is building a fun, community-driven experience that fits right into the spirit of Graze. We’re especially excited about its connection to the Fungi Friends feed!

We can’t wait to see this one grow!

Tomo

Tomo (Japanese for "friend," Italian for "book") is an old-school guestbook reimagined for the decentralized web. Built on ATProto, Tomo lets you add a guestbook to your personal website (even on static hosts like Neocities) so friends and visitors can leave messages you actually own.

But Tomo isn’t just a nostalgic nod to the early web. It’s also a powerful educational tool. With the support of this grant, its creator, Ms Boba, is dedicating time to turning Tomo into a well-documented reference app, complete with articles, tutorials, and streamable build sessions. The goal is to make ATProto accessible for everyone, from curious tinkerers to serious developers.

We love how Tomo blends tech, education, and community, and we can’t wait to see how many more guestbooks start popping up around the web.

We’ve had so many amazing entries so far — we’re looking forward to announcing further winners in June!

What’s Happening in the Fold:

• A great interview with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber in Wired — complete with Graze shoutout!

• The NBA has started testing Bluesky’s new live streaming capabilities, bringing awesome new functionality to sports fans.

• Bluesky has opened applications for verification for notable users. Don’t forget that it’s also possible for organisations to become trusted verifiers as well.

Upgrades and Improvements:

• Big news! Graze now connects with Patreon so you can give your members special access to your feeds. We’re kicking this off with two new capabilities: Sponsor Free Feeds and Members Only Feeds.

• We've integrated the @blueskydirectory.com API into Graze. Now you can access Bluesky Lists and Starter Packs in real-time in Graze to create more up-to-date, relevant feeds.

• We have added the ability to add two different types of posts to your feeds for special situations:

  • Banned Post - If you ban a user from seeing your feed you can supply a list of posts to show that user

  • Member Only Post - If you feed required membership you can show a list of posts that explains how to gain membership

• You can now export your Feed Definition to a png — perfect for sharing your genius with the world:

Get to know the Fold:

Each newsletter, we’ll chat to someone who is using Graze to do awesome stuff. If you’d like to share your work with us, reply and let us know!

This week we’re talking with Nick Gerakines, creator of Smoke Signal.

When did you join Bluesky and why?

I joined Bluesky back in March 2023. I run my own self-hosted PDS, so I’ve been pretty hands-on with the protocol from early on. At this point, I guess you could say I’m one of the Bluesky “elders.”

Can you talk us through what sets Bluesky apart from other social media platforms? There’s a lot of talk about whether or not it’s “really” decentralised or “billionaire proof” — what’s your view?

What really sets Bluesky and ATProtocol apart is how intentional the design is. It didn’t just show up one day—it came out of Twitter with the goal of building an open, decentralized alternative to traditional social platforms. That origin shaped a lot of smart decisions around user control and composability.

I wasn’t part of the founding team, but from the outside, it’s clear they worked backwards from a strong set of principles—things like identity mobility, user-owned data, and interoperable tooling. You can see that in the architecture: DIDs and handles for identity, the PDS model for data storage, and the use of open standards like HTTP, DNS, and OAuth for interoperability.

As for decentralization—it’s not perfect, but it’s pragmatic. And I’d argue it’s already more “billionaire-proof” than most platforms because the core protocol doesn’t depend on a single company or gatekeeper.

How do you explain feeds to other people? What do you think the opportunity is?

I usually explain feeds as sorted lists because that’s basically how most people already think about social media. Whether it’s reverse-chronological or ranked by some other score, it’s all about answering “what’s going on now?”

What makes Bluesky feeds interesting is the shift control. Instead of one company deciding what you see, feeds let you choose who’s curating your experience. It’s a really powerful way to give people more agency over the content they engage with.

You have an awesome project called Smoke Signal which is about community building, can you tell us about it?

I’d love to! Smoke Signal is an open source app for managing and discovering events, kind of like a community-focused event hub. It’s built on top of ATProtocol, which means it respects user identity and puts control of data back where it belongs: with the event attendees, organizers, and curators.

How do you think we get back community on the web?

I think it starts with good tools. If you look back at early web 2.0, a lot of the most impactful sites focused on social utility and also helped people connect and share in meaningful ways.

I see this next phase, web 2.0 2.0, as bringing that same spirit back, but with more respect for user choice and data ownership. It’s about rebuilding those social foundations with better values baked in.

What do you think is the future of social media?

I think we’re in a big transition period. The ways we process, transform, and understand data are evolving fast—thanks to things like AI and machine learning. That’s going to unlock a ton of content that’s been hard to surface before, especially international and hyper-local voices.

The challenge will be figuring out how to manage all that new information in a way that actually helps people connect instead of just overwhelming them. There’ll definitely be growing pains, but I’m optimistic we’ll come out of it with better, more inclusive platforms.

Come and say hello:

We’re building a great community of Graze users supporting one another in the Discord. We’d love to see you there if you’re starting out with feeds, want help, or just want to find some like-minded people.