Time for a tweet thread on the blog post I published yesterday. 🧵
Our main work at @bluesky so far has been on the @at_protocol. We built an app to make sure our protocol design supports a good user experience.
The app is a simple, straightforward microblogging client because our devs are currently focused on surfacing protocol features in the UX. The purpose of the app is to be a reference client for devs building on atproto, and to be a landing place for curious users.
Here are the protocol features we're excited to finish:
- Domain names as usernames & account portability
- Algorithmic choice & custom feeds
- Composable moderation & reputation systems
Web3: “user-generated authority, enabled by self-certifying web protocols.” A superset of technologies that include blockchains, but are not limited to them.
Or we can just use “Self-Certifying Web Protocols” (SCWP).
Authority on the web establishes who ultimately has control over content.
Web 1.0 — Host-generated content, host-generated authority.
Web 2.0 — User-generated content, host-generated authority.
Web 3.0 — User-generated content, user-generated authority.
In short, “the hosted, the posted, and the signed web.”
The "signed web" is self-certifying. Trust resides in the data itself, not in where it was found. The tools that enable this are: 1. cryptographic user identifiers 2. content-addressed data
Bitclout will make a great case study on how badly crypto projects can mess up incentive engineering when they try to monetize social networks.
Trust and reputation are key, and if you create a sketchy platform and mess with people’s reputations without their consent it is not going to go well.
In a BFT network with anonymous, untrusted participants, it’s safe to assume everyone only cares about money. But every crypto project that tries to do social and ignores that people engage for reasons other than direct monetary reward is fundamentally misunderstanding humans.
NFTs are a bet on an open source titling system for virtual goods. A tokenized virtual object is infinitely reproducible on the open web - but not in the context of a virtual world that respects its ownership, i.e. a game world, social site, or AR/VR headset.
People are spending increasing amounts of time in virtual worlds. However, platforms that create these worlds want to control the economy within them. This may be a race to adoption - which virtual titling systems or virtual worlds will gain mass adoption first?
Buying NFTs minted on Ethereum right now is an implicit bet that this blockchain-based titling system will gain the adoption necessary to drive its inclusion in future virtual worlds.
Serendipity is an enchanting feature of social networks. Part of the magic of a new app is the chance encounters it enables that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Twitter found this - ordinary accounts engage with celebrities. People discover niche communities around their interests. Everyone commiserates with a guy unfortunately named Brett Kavanagh.
Clubhouse is finding it through the chaos conference call format. It's panel discussions with world experts, or people expounding on topics they know nothing about. Makes for an entertaining mix, but the long-term mechanics haven't settled out.
The tension between chaos and control: When the unpredictable behavior of fast-acting internet swarms destabilizes society, platforms will reactively attempt to exert control. Control invites more chaos, and chaos induces control.
Information technology has simultaneously centralized and decentralized communication more than ever before. People can access knowledge, communicate, and organize with unprecedented freedom, but a single platform can modify or restrict this capability for billions.
Under normal conditions, platform power is an invisible background force. Under crisis conditions, platforms must make increasingly overt moves to retain control. Exercising their power exposes it, and drives exit and reaction against it.