Jay Graber, a startup founder and cryptocurrency developer, will lead BlueSky, a Twitter-funded, decentralized social media platform.

Ms. Graber worked on Zcash, which was a cryptocurrency created and maintained by Electric Coin.

She shared the news via Twitter.

“I’m excited to announce that I’ll be leading bluesky, an initiative started by Twitter to decentralize social media.

Over the past year, I’ve been working closely with a group of thinkers and builders from the decentralized social ecosystem. We published an ecosystem review in January, and my next step will be hiring for the bluesky team.

I look forward to partnering closely with Twitter and other companies as we embark on this journey. It won’t happen overnight, but we’ll share our progress along the way.”

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be leading @bluesky, an initiative started by @Twitter to decentralize social media. Follow updates on Twitter and at https://t.co/Sg4MxK1zwl

— Jay Graber (@arcalinea) August 16, 2021

In a December 2019 tweet, Mr. Dorsey stated that the goal of the project was to create a blockchain based decentralized social media platforms such as Twitter.

Back then in 2019, Mr Dorsey said:

“Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of Blockchain.

Why is this good for Twitter? It will allow us to access and contribute to a much larger corpus of public conversation, focus our efforts on building open recommendation algorithms which promote healthy conversation, and will force us to be far more innovative than in the past.

There are MANY challenges to make this work that Twitter would feel right becoming a client of this standard. Which is why the work must be done transparently in the open, not owned by any single private corporation, furthering the open & decentralized principles of the internet.”

According to Mr Dorsey, the project seeks to establish a standard protocol that could be used by platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook to allow users to view their posts through any interface created by developers using the same protocol.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) banned cryptocurrency in 2018. In May 2020, however, the Supreme Court overturned RBI decision and ruled that there was no valid reason to ban crypto.

After the RBI ban was lifted, cryptocurrency began to gain popularity in India within weeks but still crypto is not fully legalize in India.

A photo of an Indian driver taking cryptocurrency payments was first shared on Twitter.

One user shared a photo of an inside view of an auto rickshaw poster, captioned “We accept cryptocurrency.”

Bhaiya kitna #Bitcoin loge ???? pic.twitter.com/kdC7LadxuV

— Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) August 9, 2021

Many people were shocked to see this message, as crypto is not yet recognized in India as a payment method. Many people tagged Elon Musk, calling the rickshaw driver a big fan of Elon Musk.

He Must be @elonmusk hard core fan… #Crypto https://t.co/tCfgjMr77g

— Ravi Turamari ?? (@ravituramari) August 9, 2021

There were hundreds of responses where crypto fans asked Indian government to legalize crypto, rather than banning it.

A user writes:

“Wow! This is early adoption from young generation of India. Indian govt shod encourage this instead of banning the future of money.”

Nearly 15 million Indians have made investments in digital currencies. In India crypto investments have risen from $924 million in April 2020, to $6.5 billion by May 2021.

The South Korean central bank is piloting a digital currency in partnership with Samsung, a multinational South Korean company.

Recently Bank of Korea announced that it would make an offer to select its technological supplier for the central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Ground X, whose Klaytn platform hosts the CBDC, won the contract despite stiff competition.

An anonymous bank executive stated that the South Korea CBDC pilot program aims to determine whether it is possible to make payments using mobile phones with digital currency, but without internet access. Also, whether CBDC remittances can be sent to other mobile phone or connected bank accounts will be tested.

He further said:

“Samsung Electronics has recently decided to participate in the BOK-led CBDC pilot project, under which interested parties will research the practicalities of the CBDC in a test environment,”

The Bank of Korea’s CBDC pilot program was launched on June 28 this year, these digital payments will be tested using Galaxy mobile phones.

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