Bluesky, a decentralized social media app tied to Twitter’s pre-Elon Musk management, has gone stay on Apple’s App Retailer as of March 1.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey first introduced the Bluesky venture in 2019. A former Zcash contributor, Jay Graber joined the venture as CEO in 2021.
Although anybody can obtain the app, Bluesky is at present in non-public 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 just isn’t accessible for Android or the online.
Bluesky has no cryptocurrency-related options and doesn’t retailer information on a blockchain. Nonetheless, the platform makes use of the AT Protocol — a federated community that depends on cryptography to retailer information in a decentralized approach. This method makes it just like blockchain know-how, permitting self-ownership of knowledge.
Graber moreover famous last October that the kind of cryptography that the AT Protocol depends on is comparatively straightforward to combine with cryptocurrency.
Bluesky could also be arriving at an opportune time. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has inspired some customers to go away the location and transfer to decentralized alternate options such because the federated community Mastodon. Nonetheless, that pattern could also be dying down: Mastodon noticed its person depend 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.
Varied different decentralized and blockchain social networks have additionally gone stay in current 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.