Jack Dorsey Leaves BlueSky Board, Touts ‘Freedom Technology’ of X and Nostr

As a long-time crypto investor and observer of the tech industry, I’ve been closely following Jack Dorsey’s moves in the decentralized social media space. His recent departure from the BlueSky board is not surprising to me, given his growing focus on Bitcoin and decentralized technologies like Nostr.

Jack Dorsey, who previously led Twitter and currently heads Square’s crypto endeavors and Block payments company, has stepped down from the board of BlueSky, the social media decentralization project he supported since 2019.

In a post on X over the weekend, Dorsey urged his audience to employ “technology that upholds freedom” like X, and avoid relying on corporations for granted privileges. He made a comparable statement on Nostr, an open-source social media platform designed to deliver a completely decentralized, censorship-resistant user experience where Dorsey has been quite engaged in recent weeks and contributed 14 bitcoin (approximately $245,000 at the time) to its founder.

As a researcher looking back on events, I can share that approximately one year ago, I, Dorsey, contributed the substantial sum of ten million dollars to OpenSats, a esteemed non-profit entity dedicated to supporting free and open-source initiatives within the bitcoin community. Among these projects is Nostr, which continues to garner significant attention.

When asked if he was still on the board of BlueSky following his post, Dorsey said “no.”

As a grateful crypto investor, I’d like to express my heartfelt appreciation towards Jack for his significant contribution in both financing and kick-starting the bluesky project. Now, we’re on the hunt for a fresh addition to our board who will step into Dorsey’s shoes.

Back in December 2019, I led Twitter as its CEO and made an announcement that we were funding a small, autonomous team. Their mission was to create an “open and decentralized standard for social media.” As a devoted crypto investor, I was personally excited about this project because it aimed to promote decentralization – a core principle in the blockchain world. Twitter, being at the forefront of this movement, planned to adopt this standard as well.

“He stated that recent advancements in technology have made a decentralized approach more feasible. The advent of blockchain technology signifies a range of decentralized options for secure and permanent hosting, administration, and even monetization. There’s still much ground to cover, but the foundations are solid.”

The publicly launched social media platform is spearheaded by CEO Jay Graber, who is both a skilled software engineer and an entrepreneur in the industry.

Nostr’s rise to prominence in the last few years has made BlueSky largely unnecessary.

“There is no Nostr board,” Dorsey said on that platform Monday morning.