bluesky

@bluesky

From platforms to protocols

blueskyweb.xyzJoined November 2019

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98.9K Followers

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bluesky

@bluesky

Apr 6

With the new team on board, we’re ready to share some of the groundwork we've been doing for Bluesky.

blueskyweb.xyz

A Self-Authenticating Social Protocol

Bluesky’s mission is to drive the evolution from platforms to protocols. The conceptual framework we've adopted for meeting this objective is the "self-authenticating protocol."

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If you have questions about the architecture or code, drop in to our Matrix dev chat to talk to the developers. Let’s move from platforms to protocols! matrix.to/#/#bluesky-dev

The protocol is actively under development and will evolve as our understanding improves. If you're interested to learn more, check out the ADX architecture overview:

github.com

adx/architecture.md at main · bluesky-social/adx

Experiment in self-authenticating data structures for a federated social network - adx/architecture.md at main · bluesky-social/adx

A global view is achieved by indexers crawling the network the way search engines crawl the Web. There's no one company that can decide what gets published; instead there’s a marketplace of companies deciding what to carry to their audiences.

It’s not possible to have a usable social network without moderation. Our view is that “speech” and “reach” should be two separate layers. The speech layer can be as neutral as publishing a website. The reach layer determines what gets amplified across the network.

The core of ADX is self-authenticating data. Self-authenticating data moves authority to the user and preserves the liveness of data across every host. Users can publish to someone else’s service, or to their own, and still be a part of the network.

Before you get too excited: this isn't a launch! There's no app or network, there's only a command-line for testing. We're releasing this to work in the open and share our progress.

github.com

GitHub - bluesky-social/adx: Experiment in self-authenticating data structures for a federated...

Experiment in self-authenticating data structures for a federated social network - GitHub - bluesky-social/adx: Experiment in self-authenticating data structures for a federated social network

Today we're open-sourcing the Authenticated Data eXperiment (ADX) to begin working in public.

blueskyweb.xyz

Working In Public

It’s been four months since the Bluesky company started hiring a team. Now that we have a few people on board, we’re starting to work in public. Today we’re releasing ADX, the “Authenticated Data...

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It's rare for a project to be set up like this. We’re using our freedom to focus on building, and will work towards our vision of a durable protocol for public conversation no matter what happens.

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We’ve written about how we think a durable protocol requires self-authenticating components, which require no external evidence of authenticity. This way, even if people choose to use servers run by private companies, they’ll never be locked in.

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bluesky

@bluesky

· Apr 6

With the new team on board, we’re ready to share some of the groundwork we've been doing for Bluesky. blueskyweb.xyz/blog/3-6-2022-

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Twitter's funding of Bluesky is not subject to any conditions except one: that Bluesky is to research and develop technologies that enable open and decentralized public conversation.

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Bluesky has received $13 million to ensure we have the freedom and independence to get started on R&D. Former Twitter CEO

@jack

is on our board, & a former Twitter security engineer has joined the team.

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bluesky

@bluesky

· Feb 7

It’s been a long time coming, but the Bluesky PBLLC is now an independent organization formed to implement our vision! Stay tuned for updates. blueskyweb.org/blog/2-7-2022-

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The “public benefit” part of our structure gives us the freedom to put our resources towards our mission without an obligation to return money to shareholders. The company is owned by the team itself, without any controlling stake held by Twitter.

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Both Twitter and Bluesky realized that our independence is important to the success of the project, which is why we established an independent company to ensure that we serve the broadest possible interests.

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The bluesky project originated with Twitter in 2019, but the Bluesky PBLLC established this year is an independent company focused on decentralized social network R&D.

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Given the surge of interest in Twitter's future, we thought this would be a good time to clarify the relationship between Bluesky and Twitter.

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By the way,

is an independent company from Twitter! We're a Public Benefit LLC started this year that’s funded through a contract with Twitter. Prior to this, Bluesky was a community discussion. Read more here:

blueskyweb.xyz

How it Started

Bluesky was announced in 2019 but the legal entity itself was only recently set up. In the meantime, the bluesky community took shape and has taken on a life of its own.

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bluesky

@bluesky

Apr 6

For some aspects, we’ll be able to use pieces that already exist, and for others, we’ll have to come up with solutions of our own. Stay tuned for updates, we’ll share more soon.

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Our team has previously built leading decentralized web protocols and blockchain networks, and is working on synthesizing the best of what we’ve seen into something new.

@rabble

best sums up this approach.

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rabble

@rabble

· Mar 31

Replying to @pfrazee @nickoneill and 4 others

That's kind of the point. We don't need solitary geniuses who are going to go off and build something all new on their own. What we need is to take the best of many experiments, iterate, synthesize, and create something new based on the best ideas and models.

What we’re building doesn’t fall neatly in existing categories. It could be described as a hybrid federated network with p2p characteristics, but it’s more descriptive to focus on the capabilities – self-authenticating identities and data – than on network topology.

We started writing code to validate ideas and iterate on something concrete, but everything is still fully experimental. You can expect a command line client to play with, but don’t expect to build your next big app on it yet, as anything can change at this stage.

In this post, we’ve started to lay out the high level objectives we’ve set and how we plan to meet them. In the coming weeks, we’ll be publishing more of the research we’ve done since the ecosystem review and open sourcing preliminary code.

Verifiable computation uses cryptographic proofs to allow observers to verify that a computation was performed correctly without having to run it themselves. We are investigating novel applications to existing challenges of distributed social networks.

Authenticated data enables trust to reside in the data itself, not in where you found it, allowing apps to move away from client-server architectures. This creates “user-generated authority”.

Content-addressed data means content is referenced by its cryptographic hash — the unique digital “fingerprint” of a piece of data. Using public keys and content-addresses, we can sign content by the user's key to prove they created it.

Cryptographic identifiers associate users with public keys. Self-sovereign identity is based on having cryptographic identifiers for users. Control of an account is proved by a cryptographic signature from a user, rather than an entry in a database keeping track of logins.

The three components that enable self-authentication are cryptographic identifiers, content-addressed data, and verifiable computation. The first two are familiar concepts in distributed systems, and the third is an emerging area of research.

Host-certified data becomes dead – decontextualized and non-transactable – when it is no longer hosted by its original service. Self-authenticating data moves authority to the user and therefore preserves the liveness of data across every hosting service.

When resources in a network can attest to their own authenticity, then that data is inherently live – canonical and transactable – no matter where it is located. This is a departure from the connection-centric model of the Web, where information is host-certified.

The framework we've adopted to meet these objectives is the "self-authenticating protocol." In law, a self-authenticating document requires no extrinsic evidence of authenticity. In computer science, an authenticated data structure can have its operations independently verified.

Trust: There’s many ways to improve trust, but Bluesky’s approach is to work towards a transparent and verifiable system by building a network that is open by default and allows users to audit the performance of services and switch if they are dissatisfied.

Scale: Decentralization adds new functionality in other domains, but when it comes to scale, we’re aiming to replicate the global experience Twitter currently has. Our goal is to make global conversations possible while preserving the freedoms of open protocol.

Portability: We can switch mobile carriers without losing our phone numbers. If we could switch between social apps without losing our identity or social graph, then social media would be a competitive open market again.

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Some of our key objectives are portability, scale, and trust. Portability allows people to keep their social life intact even if they switch providers. Scale allows people to participate in global discourse. Trust is created by giving people insight into what services are doing.

There are many existing protocols for decentralizing discourse, including ActivityPub, SSB, Matrix, & RSS. Each of these are successful in their own right, but none of them fully met the goals we had for a network that enables global long-term public conversations at scale.

Bluesky’s mission is to drive the evolution from platforms to protocols. The tools for public conversation should exist outside of private companies as common infrastructure, like the Internet itself.

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I'm thrilled to be working with such great people

. Honored to have

, dholms,

, &

helping to architect a new generation of resilient social networking infrastructure.

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bluesky

@bluesky

· Mar 31

Excited to introduce our first hires and technical advisors! blueskyweb.xyz/blog/2-31-2022

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Its been a blast working with this team, very excited for what comes next

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bluesky

@bluesky

· Mar 31

Technical advisors to the team include Martin Kleppmann (@martinkl), author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications, and @Whyrusleeping (Jeromy Johnson), lead engineer on @IPFS and @Filecoin.

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Hey everybody, really big news today. I am indeed working at

@bluesky

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bluesky

@bluesky

· Mar 31

Paul Frazee (@pfrazee) is a protocol engineer and full-stack web developer. Paul previously built Patchwork, the first application using the @securescuttleb1 distributed social protocol, and @BeakerBrowser, the first web browser for the @HypercoreProto distributed web protocol.

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