Graber To Lead Twitter-Backed Social Web Startup Bluesky

Cryptocurrency developer Jay Graber announced Monday (August 16) on Twitter she has been chosen to lead decentralized social media platform Blue Sky.

In the Twitter thread, she said she’ll oversee the company recently launched by Twitter to decentralize social media.

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

“Over the past year, I’ve been working closely with a group of thinkers and builders from the decentralized social ecosystem,” Graber wrote in her announcement. “We published an ecosystem review in January, and my next step will be hiring for the bluesky team.”

“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,” she wrote.

The announcement also was confirmed by Twitter CEO and Founder Jack Dorsey in a tweet later Monday, who said it was a step closer to decentralizing social media.

Jay will be leading @bluesky!

Another step towards decentralizing Twitter and social media.

Now we can move much faster, and through code. https://t.co/9RLR4Je8GE

— jack (@jack) August 16, 2021

Graber founded Happening — a site for social event creation and invitations — in March 2019. She was a software engineer at Skuchain and Zcash Company. Zcash is an open, permissionless digital currency.

In related cryptocurrency news, Twitter might integrate the bitcoin layer 2 payments protocol Lightning Network.

See Also: Dorsey: Lightning Network May Be Coming To Twitter

Dorsey seemed to indicate as much on the social media platform in June.

Dorsey said it was “only a matter of time” before Lightning Network is built into Twitter. The Lightning Network is a layer above the bitcoin blockchain with user-generated channels to send and receive payments.

Dorsey’s FinTech payments company, Square, announced last fall it had invested $50 million to purchase 4,709 bitcoins.

In February, Dorsey posted a photo on social media of his computer running bitcoin “node” software.

Related: What The Square Afterpay Deal Means For BNPL, FinTech, BigTech And Banks

Square announced on August 2 that it’s acquiring Afterpay for $29 billion. The deal allows Square and Afterpay to scale a two-sided, multichannel payments, commerce and financial services ecosystem that leverages Square’s integrated POS platform and merchant services capabilities.