Bluesky, a decentralized social media app tied to Twitter’s pre-Elon Musk management, has gone stay on Apple’s App Store as of March 1.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey first introduced the Bluesky mission in 2019. A former Zcash contributor, Jay Graber joined the mission as CEO in 2021.
Although anybody can obtain the app, Bluesky is presently in personal beta, and customers should enter an invitation code to make use of it. Current statements from Graber counsel that extra invite codes can be found to those that contact her as of Wednesday.
The app is just not out there for Android or the net.
Bluesky has no cryptocurrency-related options and doesn’t retailer information on a blockchain. Nevertheless, the platform makes use of the AT Protocol — a federated community that depends on cryptography to retailer information in a decentralized means. This strategy makes it much like blockchain expertise, permitting self-ownership of information.
Graber moreover famous last October that the kind of cryptography that the AT Protocol depends on is comparatively simple to combine with cryptocurrency.
Bluesky could also be arriving at an opportune time. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has inspired some customers to depart the positioning and transfer to decentralized options such because the federated community Mastodon. Nevertheless, that pattern could also be dying down: Mastodon noticed its user count fall from 2.5 million to 1.4 million in January regardless of gaining most customers through the Twitter exodus — an ominous signal for Bluesky’s competing product.
Numerous different decentralized and blockchain social networks have additionally gone stay in latest months. Nostr launched Damus on Feb. 1, whereas Emurgo launched its Cardano-focused community Spot on Feb. 16. Lens Protocol, with hyperlinks to Aave, went stay in mid-2022.