Twitter Taps Ex-Privacy Zcash Developer to Lead DLT Social Media Project

Twitter has chosen Jay Graber, a former developer for Zcash, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, to lead its decentralized social media project, Bluesky.

• Graber announced the news via Twitter on Monday (August 16, 2021). The developer wrote and published a review of the decentralized social ecosystem back in January 2021.

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be leading @bluesky, an initiative started by @Twitter to decentralize social media. Follow updates on Twitter and at https://t.co/Sg4MxK1zwl

— Jay Graber (@arcalinea) August 16, 2021

• Meanwhile, Bluesky is still at its early stages, with Graber’s appointment showing gradual progress of the protocol. Twitter CEO and Bitcoin proponent Jack Dorsey, said that the latest development meant that the Bluesky project “can move much faster, and through code.”
• The new project head also stated that the next step would be to hire people for the Bluesky team. A statement from Graber’s tweet thread reads:

“I look forward to partnering closely with Twitter and other companies as we embark on this journey. It won’t happen overnight, but we’ll share our progress along the way.”

• The Bluesky project was first unveiled by Jack Dorsey in December 2019. According to Dorsey at the time, the social media giant would fund a small group of developers to build a “decentralized standard for social media.”
• Following the ban of the Twitter account belonging to former US President Donald Trump, Dorsey said that the Internet needed to imitate Bitcoin’s model. According to the Twitter CEO:

“The reason I have so much passion for Bitcoin is largely because of the model it demonstrates: a foundational internet technology that is not controlled or influenced by any single individual or entity. This is what the Internet wants to be, and over time, more of it will be.”

• Dorsey who has been vocal about Bitcoin adoption said during Twitter’s quarterly earnings call in July, that the flagship crypto should be part of the company’s future. The Twitter chief has also endorsed BTC as the currency of the Internet.
• Back in June, the social media giant launched a non-fungible token (NFT) collection comprising 140 free NFTs. Meanwhile, the collection has generated 2,100 ETH ($6.7 million) in trading volume on the NFT marketplace OpenSea.