Software engineer and crypto developer Jay Graber has announced they will be leading the much anticipated decentralized social media initiative for Twitter announced back in 2019. Graber worked as a software engineer for Zcash, and a blockchain firm Skuchain, signifying their experience in the field.
On Monday, Graber announced on Twitter that they will be in charge of the Bluesky project. Graber will be working closely with a team of engineers from the decentralized social ecosystem, and plan on hiring more experts for the Bluesky team. As a part of the next steps towards establishing decentralized social media, the Bluesky team will be collaborating with Twitter and other major companies to finish the project.
The Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appointed Graber to lead the Bluesky project, stating it would push the project faster, and through code. Aside from the Bluesky project, Dorsey stated his plans to integrate Bitcoin’s Lighting Network sidechain with one of his business ventures. It is unknown whether the Lighting Network will be integrated into Bluesky as Dorsey did not specify which venture will be integrated with the network.
Jack Dorsey announced the platform’s plans to establish a decentralized social media back in December 2019. Dorey stated that Twitter will be funding a team dedicated to the development of a decentralized standard for social media, adding that the company will ultimately be part of this standard. He addressed the series of challenges faced by social media networks, specially stating that “centralized enforcement of the global policy to address abuse, and misleading information” is a major issue on the platform.
Other issues faced by the social media platform include controversial content that sparks outrage rather than informative conversations, and shifting content hosting while removing recommendation algorithms to direct user’s attention.
Dorsey made it clear that a decentralized standard will resolve the challenges faced by the platform. At the time of the announcement, the Twitter CEO stated “New technologies have emerged to make a decentralized approach more viable”. Dorsey added that blockchain leads to a series of decentralized solutions needed for establishing the social media standard. Dorsey’s statements indicated that taking a decentralized approach has become convenient due to the latest blockchain technology due to its innovative nature.
The co-founder of Stacks and Kraken growth lead Dan Held, Muneeb Ali expressed his support for Graber’s leading role in pushing the Bluesky project towards completion.
