Bluesky, a US public benefit corporation with the mission to develop and drive large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation raised $8M in seed funding.
The round was led by Neo, with participation from Joe Beda, Bob Young, Amjad Masad, Amir Shevat, Heather Meeker, Jeromy Johnson, Automattic, Protocol Labs, Sarah Drasner, Katelyn Donnelly, Ali Evans, Stav Erez, Kris Nóva, Brad Fitzpatrick, Abdul Ly, and many other operators.
The company intends to use the funds to expand the team, manage operation and infrastructure costs, and grow the AT Protocol ecosystem as well as the app.
Led by Owned by Jay Graber, Bluesky is building the AT Protocol, a protocol for public conversation and an open-source framework for building social apps, meaning people have transparency into how it is built and what is being developed. It creates a standard format for user identity, follows, and data on social apps, allowing apps to interoperate and users to move across them freely. It is a federated network with account portability. The protocol is close to completion, and the app is a microblogging client built on it to showcase the protocol’s features. The app also introduces people to how a social web on the AT Protocol will work.
The company brought a few hundred beta testers onto the app in February, and by the end of April, they reached over 50k users. They plan to grow the network organically, so they periodically distribute invites to existing users.
FinSMEs
17/07/2023