Bluesky, a decentralized social network project funded by Twitter, has announced the beta version of its upcoming app.
The project team announced that it will launch a social media app called Bluesky Social, which will be offered to end users.
Bluesky’s waitlist quickly saw excess demand, as the project wrote that it had “reached a temporary limit on mailing list signups.” Though Bluesky has changed mail providers and is still accepting new waitlist applications, the incident suggests that there is significant demand for the app.
The team also announced the next version of the platform’s underlying protocol, formerly known as ADX.
The team said today that it has rebranded ADX as the “Authenticated Transport Protocol” or “AT Protocol.” It aims to provide portable accounts, a choice of content algorithms, interoperability with other services, and high performance.
The team also described AT Protocol as a federated network, meaning that users can choose from different providers or self-host their own.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who first announced the project in 2019, acknowledged the project’s latest milestone today. He simply called the news “foundational” in a tweet.
foundational, @at_protocol https://t.co/vMp6VKaxWY
— jack (@jack) October 18, 2022
Despite earlier expectations, today’s announcement did not announce any cryptocurrency or blockchain.
Bluesky’s earliest surveys considered blockchain social networks such as Steemit and Peepeth alongside non-blockchain protocols such as ActivityPub and XMPP. In 2021, former Zcash developer Jay Graber was hired to head the project. That same year, Dorsey responded positively to the suggestion of integrating Lightning Network into Bluesky.
Though blockchain appears absent from the final product, Bluesky will likely appeal to the crypto community due to shared values of decentralization and user control.
