Any time someone carves out a new space online, the same sort of thing happens. Pioneers create infrastructure. Early adopters rush to explore the new medium. New possibilities or new constraints spur creativity. Then, usually one of two things happens: the new space was a brief fad, and it dies away; or the masses arrive and it undergoes an eternal September, standardization, commercialization, enshittification, drama… in other words, becomes integrated into the wider net. Those fed up leave and begin to carve out a new space…

Some initiatives (like the Gemini Protocol) remain (for now) in a tenuous niche where mass adoption seems impossible and yet they also don’t seem to be going away.