Bluesky secures $15 million in its Series A funding round and plans to offer subscriptions.

The decentralized social application Bluesky has recently revealed that it has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round, after securing $8 million in an earlier funding round last year. This capital increase comes in a growth context for Bluesky, driven in part by X users who feel uncomfortable with recent changes to the blocking feature and the decision to allow third parties to train artificial intelligence with users' public posts. In the last month, the platform has gained approximately 3 million new users, reaching a total of around 13 million.

Bluesky started as an incubator within Twitter, representing former CEO Jack Dorsey's vision for the future of social media. However, the social network and the open-source AT protocol developer are no longer linked to Dorsey, who left the startup's board earlier this year. Nevertheless, many of Bluesky's initial goals remain intact: like Mastodon, the Bluesky AT protocol is decentralized, allowing people to set up their own servers and social applications, as well as providing transparency to external developers about the development process.

In a blog announcement, Bluesky stated that with this new funding, they plan to continue supporting and expanding their community, investing in trust and safety, as well as in the developer ecosystem called ATmosphere. They also indicated that they would begin developing a subscription model to offer features such as higher quality video uploads and profile customizations, which will include colors and frames for avatars. The company has been quick to clarify that this new payment option will not be similar to X's, where subscribers receive blue verification marks and an algorithm boost that makes their posts more visible. Paul Frazee, a Bluesky developer, made it clear that they are not interested in "pay-to-win" techniques that affect visibility.

The Series A round was led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Amir Shevat from Darkmode, and Joe Beda, co-creator of Kubernetes. The involvement of a cryptocurrency-focused firm has raised some concerns among skeptics, particularly because CEO Jay Graber previously worked as a software engineer at a cryptocurrency company called Zcash. However, Bluesky has taken the initiative to assure its users that it has no intentions of transitioning to web3. In their announcement, they stated that their philosophy with Blockchain Capital is that technology should serve the user, not the other way around, and emphasized that their application and the AT protocol do not use blockchain or cryptocurrencies, and that they will avoid "hyper-financializing" the social experience through tokens, cryptocurrency trading, or NFTs.

Graber also mentioned that Kinjal Shah, who is a general partner at Blockchain Capital, will join the Bluesky board. She shares the vision of creating a social media ecosystem that empowers users and supports developers' freedom, and Graber highlighted that it has been a positive experience collaborating with her, which positions Bluesky favorably for its future growth.