Jack Dorsey, Block CEO and Twitter co-founder and former CEO, is launching a decentralized social network through his Bluesky project.
Bluesky got underway in 2019 with the goal of revolutionizing social media. It started as an independent team funded by Twitter to develop an open and decentralized social media protocol that would eventually become the new standard.
In its early days, Twitter had the potential to set this kind of standard, but took a more centralized path, Dorsey tweeted when first announcing the project. Bluesky began working to fill that role, and Dorsey eventually joined Bluesky's board in February this year after leaving Twitter in 2021.
And on Tuesday, after three years of behind-the-scenes work, Bluesky announced its new Authenticated Transfer (AT) protocol. The AT protocol is a "federated" network, which allows servers to communicate with each other, similar to email, Bluesky says. Rather than one site running the network, there can be many sites.
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It would also enable developers to self-host and build apps on the network that work across multiple platforms. And users will have their choice of providers and algorithms to have more control over their experiences.
AT Protocol says the world needs a diverse market of connected and cross-platform services to ensure healthy competition. This interoperation, as they call it, is one of the major themes of the metaverse.
Many companies, including Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Google, are heavily invested in developing the web's next frontier of connected virtual products, services and games.
Dorsey's Former Plans
Block's cryptocurrency initiative Spiral, formerly called Square Crypto, is doing the same thing for Bitcoin. And Twitter's goal was to eventually become a client of the standard, Dorsey tweeted in 2019. But he resigned and separated from the company. That decision will likely be left to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk agreed to purchase Twitter but has wavered on the deal.
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