I was also in the early pre-Bluesky group. It was chaotic and there were a lot of contradictory pressures on the group. Some people wanted Bluesky to be a twitter replacement, tech Twitter itself would eventually use. Others wanted it to be a way of solving the problem of social media platforms becoQuiet Earthworm was a former zcash dev / Fight for the Future activist who’d been building a decentralized social events app / meetup clone called happn. She’d done some SSB (secure scuttlebutt) development but I think happn was on its own protocol she made. It never took off so she had time on her hands to work on the Bluesky researnos. The thing is Jay was available and did the work on Bluesky before it was Bluesky the company or they’d created the ATprotocol. It wasn’t clear that Bluesky would need to make a new protocol. That was the reason for the research paper. Lots of people showed up and partic