Bluesky alternative to Twitter- The Cryptonomist

Major crypto news regarding Twitter: Jack Dorsey is introducing a decentralized alternative named Bluesky that could challenge Elon Musk and his social network.

Here are all the details.

Crypto news regarding Twitter: here’s what’s going on

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of the social network Twitter, is moving forward with Bluesky, a decentralized alternative to Twitter that has just entered private beta testing.

Bluesky has hit Apple‘s app store as an invitation-only app, allowing some people to try out the new social experience by creating an account via an invitation code

According to a TechCrunch report, the Bluesky iOS app debuted on 17 February, accumulating about 2,000 installations as of 28 February. The app is reportedly not yet available to Android testers on Google Play.

In the app store preview of Bluesky, the rival app looks a lot like Twitter, with the interface having many features similar to it, including the way handles, followers, posts, and replies are presented.

In a similar style to Twitter, the Bluesky app’s feed also has likes, comments and reposts. According to TechCrunch, the app allows users to create a post up to 265 characters or slightly less than Twitter’s 280 characters.

Unlike Twitter, however, which asks, “What’s happening?”, Bluesky asks, “What’s up?” Bluesky users can share, mute and block accounts, while more advanced tools, such as adding them to lists, are not yet available.

Differences between Bluesky and Twitter

Despite looking so much like Twitter, Bluesky is set to have some technical features designed to make it very different from Elon Musk‘s social media giant.

The platform aims to provide a decentralized social networking protocol, which should make user data free from the influence of any government or corporation. Bluesky is built on the AT protocol, a new federated social network that integrates ideas from the latest decentralized technologies.

Originally known as the Authenticated Transfer Protocol, or ADX, the AT protocol is Bluesky’s main effort to enable a new way for servers to communicate with each other, allowing individuals and companies to independently host and have multiple Web sites instead of one.

As previously reported, Bluesky released its first batch of code in early May 2022, a few weeks before Dorsey stepped down from Twitter’s board of directors.

In October, he officially introduced the Bluesky social app and AT protocol, nearly three years after Dorsey launched the project with Twitter’s support in 2019. The news comes as Dorsey allegedly moved some Bitcoin using his other social protocol, Nostr. Damus, the first mobile app to leverage the protocol, was released on the app store in February 2023.

More crypto news for Twitter: Web3 app and $12.5 million funding

Developers of one of the first Android-based mobile browsers are working to take online communication to the next level by introducing it to Web3.

Sending Labs, a new startup focused on decentralized communication protocols, has secured $12.5 million in seed funding to launch the Web3 communications stack.

The new platform takes on the mission of building an accessible and secure Web3 communications infrastructure for developers and the community by applying end-to-end decentralization to the core of its products.

With the new offering, Sending Labs aims to enable communications that protect privacy and ensure ownership and transfer of digital assets within community chats.

Initial funding included lead investors such as Insignia Venture Partners, MindWorks Capital and Signum Capital, as well as other participants such as K3 Ventures and Lingfeng Innovation Fund.

Sending Labs in the announcement emphasized the following:

“Twitter officially bans third-party clients, while millions of FTX users are barred from asset recall, has brought decentralization and ownership of digital assets back into the spotlight.”

The co-founder and CEO of Sending Labs, Joe Yu, pointed out that Web3 and decentralized group messaging are the first steps in returning data ownership to the user.