Bluesky, an independent project dedicated to developing decentralized social media, has been funded by Twitter Inc. for three years, but since Elon Musk acquired Twitter last week, some have wondered what will happen to the project.
Bluesky was founded in 2019, with Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey playing an important role in the project.
Dorsey announced Bluesky’s first platform, AT Protocol, was in beta testing just as Musk was finalizing his acquisition of Twitter, causing online chatter.
Despite receiving financial support from Twitter, Bluesky is a completely independent entity with no ties to Twitter shareholders.
The company was founded as a “decentralized social network protocol development initiative.” That is, despite having separate curation and moderation systems, separate social networks could interact with one another via an open standard.
Is Bluesky part of Twitter?
Bluesky is a project to create a decentralized social network protocol. It was announced in 2019 as a non-profit initiative by Twitter and is currently in the research phase as of 2022.
Bluesky is owned entirely by the team, formally known as Bluesky Public Benefit LLC, with no controlling stake held by Twitter.