Decentralized Social Network Bluesky Gets 30,000 Signups for Beta

Bluesky is jockeying to be the first major decentralized social network, and within 48 hours it already had more than 30,000 users signed up for its beta.

The project would use blockchain technology to enable a new kind of social media, featuring account portability and which would put control of the algorithms in the hands of users.

Whether Bluesky will feature content censorship resistance remains to be seen. The project is backed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. A decade ago Dorsey celebrated Twitter as the “free speech wing of the free speech party” but in the years since under his watch and after his departure, Twitter has become one of the most censored and algorithmically controlled social media sites in existence.

Even if Bluesky doesn’t live up to the censorship-resistance levels that crypto users advocate, it will be a taste of what Web3 could make possible.

Bluesky wants to build a "social internet" and help users avoid data silos that most commonly exist across internet applications. Its soon-to-be-released app is built on a decentralized social media protocol called the Authenticated Transport Protocol, or “AT,” which is aimed at making social media open source and interoperable, allowing users to interact with different applications, all within one ecosystem.

“The World Wide Web wouldn’t have been much fun if it was created without a browser, and the same is true of the AT Protocol,” the company said Tuesday.

Dorsey first announced that Twitter was funding a team to develop a "decentralized standard for social media" in December 2019.

In August 2021, Twitter chose crypto developer Jay Graber to be the lead at Bluesky, making it entirely separate from Twitter. In May, the protocol released the first iteration of its AT protocol ahead of beta testing trials.