> All the net needs is a standard API (non-disqus) which will allow people to discover

How can a discovery API work? Please describe :- )

- What API endpoints are needed and what would they do?

- How do they help with identifying good blogs?

- How do they help people discover blog posts they want to read, among all good blog posts?

- How can cheating, be prevented? (like, pretending one's blog post got 999 999 visits & "upvotes", to boost it's populartiy score)

I'm interested because I'm developing an open source Disqus alternative. (It's called Talkyard Blog Comments. There's also Commmento, also open source under active development.)

Well, the ideal API would have JS endpoints, since that's easiest to work with. I envisage a sort of client-side validation system, instead of a central server. Something like dat (https://dat.foundation). That would prevent cheating I guess. The idea is to not really aid discovery without having the current blog author endorse it. Either that or there might be a sort of voting system. What they want to read is something I would rather not work on. The discovery process should be for the site, not individual posts I guess. Talkyard is nice, I couldn't find Commento though..