Revolution.Social Decentralized Social Media for 40 Million+ Users (with Bluesky’s Jay Graber)
Dec 18, 2025
Jay Graber, founder and CEO of Bluesky and digital rights activist, discusses building Bluesky on the AT Protocol. She talks about scaling to 40M users with a tiny team. Topics include identity portability, permissionless app building, layered moderation, regulatory headaches like age verification, and the broader ecosystem of interoperable social apps.
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Research Built Blue Sky
- Jay Graber transitioned from activism to building Blue Sky by researching existing decentralized protocols for Twitter.
- Twitter funded her research, which became the foundation for Blue Sky's design choices.
Usability Meets Self-Custody
- Blue Sky balances user autonomy and convenience by offering custody options for identities and keys.
- Users can migrate identities to self-custody when they want maximal control without sacrificing mainstream usability.
Hypergrowth With A Small Team
- Blue Sky scaled from millions of users with a tiny team, meaning huge users-per-employee ratios.
- The team adopts a 'do it well but as easily as possible' philosophy to manage growth pains.
