Twitter’s project to create a decentralised social network — Bluesky is finally about to get an app. The network announced Tuesday morning that they’re getting closer to launching the Bluesky app and also shared some updates on what’s coming next for ADX.
While we don’t really have a release date, features or just about anything to go about, the real deal here is the AT Protocol, the new name for ADX which stands for Authentication Transfer Protocol.
It’s supposed to be a new “federated social network” that integrates ideas from multiple decentralised technologies into a simple, fast and open network. There are currently four things that make the AT Protocol unique.
- Account Portability: The ATP allows users to move their accounts from one provider to another without losing any data or social graphs.
- Algorithmic Choice: ATP also gives users an “open algorithms mode” giving them more control over their experience.
- Interoperation: ATP uses Lexicon, a schema-based interoperation framework to solve interoperability challenges ensuring healthy competition between different connected services.
- Performance: As the name suggests, ATP has given performance and loading times some thought with a goal to quickly load even at large scales.
Bluesky is all set to start testing the protocol going forward. Protocol work has been going on in a public GitHub repository since May. There’s now an AT Protocol website showing off certain to-do tasks in the specs and the technology is finally stable enough for the team to start communicating what’s going on behind the scenes.
Testing is being done as a private beta at the moment. As the beta test runs, the team will reiterate the protocol specs while also sharing details of how everything works. Testing will eventually move to public beta when the team determines it’s ready. In the meantime, people willing to participate in the test can sign up for the private beta here.
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