Who Owns the Future of Social Media? A giant leap to decentralize core components of Bluesky's AT Protocol ecosystem

Project Liberty and Free Our Feeds Partner to Build a Resilient Open Social Web

NEW YORK, Feb. 27, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Project Liberty and Free Our Feeds are taking a decisive step toward reshaping the digital landscape by securing the long-term decentralization of the AT Protocol, the open protocol powering the Bluesky application. This partnership marks a milestone in decentralized social networking, ensuring that access to the "firehose" of AT protocol data is available to a broad ecosystem of developers and users, independent of any single controller or corporation. By integrating with Frequency—a public, permissionless blockchain developed by Project Liberty's technology team and designed specifically for high-volume social networking—this initiative reinforces the foundation of a user-driven internet, prioritizing interoperability, data sovereignty, and resilience against centralized control.

Reinforcing Decentralized Social Infrastructure

The rise of corporate-dominated social platforms has led to a consolidation of power that restricts user control, algorithmic transparency, and content accessibility. Bluesky created the AT (Authenticated Transfer) Protocol to provide an alternative architecture that prioritizes user control, with more than 30 million users now connected. However, critical infrastructure components for developers building applications and services that complement or provide alternatives to the Bluesky app itself are currently hosted exclusively by Bluesky PBC. Project Liberty and Free Our Feeds are addressing this challenge by creating an independent framework that preserves the integrity of AT Protocol data while making it openly discoverable independent of Bluesky's services. By leveraging Frequency, this collaboration ensures that content remains publicly accessible and verifiable, disentangling the future of the ecosystem from the future of any single entity and preventing the possibility of any entity exerting undue influence over digital conversations in the future.

"Decentralization is about more than just open access—it's about building a sustainable, resilient system that prevents any one player from controlling the digital public square," said Braxton Woodham, Chief Technology Officer at Project Liberty, co-creator of the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), and co-founder of Frequency.

"Our partnership with Free Our Feeds is a practical demonstration of how decentralized networks can operate at scale while remaining transparent and accessible to all."

Safeguarding the AT Protocol's Independence

A critical component of this effort is ensuring that Bluesky's public content can remain accessible through a decentralized infrastructure. This is achieved by integrating Frequency, which enables independent data storage and indexing outside of corporate control. This collaboration directly addresses concerns about the longevity and openness of decentralized social networks.

"This partnership ensures that users and developers are not dependent on any single entity to access or build on the AT Protocol," said Robin Berjon of Free Our Feeds. "A key goal of decentralization is resilience, making sure that our critical digital infrastructure never depends on the whims of a single actor."

A New Standard for Open Social Networks

This initiative sets the stage for greater interoperability between decentralized protocols. While the first phase focuses on securing the AT Protocol's public data, future collaboration between Project Liberty and Free Our Feeds will investigate opportunities for decentralized identity solutions and cross-protocol interoperability between AT Protocol, ActivityPub, and DSNP, reinforcing the foundation for a truly open and user-governed internet.

"A free and open internet must be built on protocols, not platforms," said Audrey Tang, senior fellow of the Project Liberty Institute and former Digital Minister of Taiwan. "This initiative strengthens the AT Protocol's foundation, ensuring that it remains a public good, available to all, monopolized by no one, and empowering users with real choices in how they engage with digital spaces."

Shaping the Future of a User-Owned Internet

This initiative represents a major leap toward realizing a fully decentralized, user-controlled social media ecosystem at scale. As the deployment of this new infrastructure progresses, broader conversations around decentralization, governance, and the future of open social networks will take center stage.

By securing and enhancing Bluesky's content discovery mechanisms through decentralized technologies, Project Liberty and Free Our Feeds are driving a movement that challenges traditional models of corporate-controlled social media. This effort signals a future where users, not platforms, dictate the rules of engagement, marking a fundamental shift in the way digital communities are built, sustained, and protected.

As part of this broader vision, Free Our Feeds has officially joined the Project Liberty Alliance, a global coalition of over 100 organizations spanning tech companies, policy groups, impact initiatives, academic institutions, and more. The Alliance serves as a learning and collaboration engine, enabling members to work together, share knowledge, and build real-world solutions that challenge the dominance of centralized platforms. This partnership strengthens the growing movement toward a people-powered internet, ensuring that the future of social networks belongs to its users, not corporations.

About Frequency

Frequency is a cutting-edge blockchain built to handle high-volume use cases, enabling builders to create decentralized social applications at massive scale. Traditional blockchains face volatile, high transaction costs that are impractical for social networking. Frequency revolutionizes this with a unique pricing model, allowing builders to reserve predictable, low-cost transaction capacity. Designed to power the Social Web, Frequency seamlessly integrates core social networking functions directly into the internet, laying the foundation for a more open, interconnected online world. By connecting to Frequency, applications can efficiently deliver Web3 features to vast user bases, harnessing the powerful network effects of a shared, universal social graph.

For more information visit Frequency.xyz.

About Project Liberty

Project Liberty is leading the movement to give people back control of their lives in the digital age by ensuring they have a voice, choice, and stake in a better internet. Started in 2019 and publicly launched in 2021 by civic entrepreneur Frank McCourt and supported by a $500-million commitment, Project Liberty includes the work of the Project Liberty Institute—a 501(c)(3) with an international partner network that includes Georgetown University, Stanford University, ETH Zurich, and other leading academic institutions and civic organizations—and a technology team that is focused on developing the next generation of digital infrastructure. Project Liberty's activities include the release of the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), which is stewarded by the Institute and freely available as a piece of digital public infrastructure. DSNP serves as the bedrock of a more equitable web enabling a new era of innovation that empowers people over platforms and serves the common good. For more information visit ProjectLiberty.io and DSNP.org.

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SOURCE Frequency