It:
- is P2P. Everyone using the app sees the same network; no federation keeping communities separate. This also means that everyone receives information from the network, including posts, comments, and moderator actions. One feature here is that if a moderator is overbearing, you can ignore their actions.
- features mod elections so that the default list of moderators can be selected by the community; mod actions are auditable since they're sent to all peers so you can see what the mod has done.
- is text only by default. I think there's a feature to approve domains to have their content render in the app, but it is mostly a text based community
- doesn't keep the whole history of posts to the network. I think this is probably a development choice to make sure clients don't have to download terabytes of history just to view recent posts. It's marketed as being ephemeral and won't keep track of your brain fart posts made years ago.
- is mature. Posts on HN about Aether have been made as far back as 10 years ago.
- features proof of work spam prevention. Every action you make takes a little bit of computing power to prevent network spam.