Bluesky and Mastodon’s social networks may soon be accessible through a single app — at least that’s what Bluesky hopes. The new decentralized social network, originally incubated at Twitter run by Jack Dorsey, supports a project that will connect — or “bridge” — Mastodon requests with Bluesky requests so that consumer apps like Ivory are compatible and with Bluesky.
The work, compiled SkyBridgewas among the recipients of a small distribution $4,800 in grants from Bluesky, allocated to projects. SkyBridge was the second largest recipient this current cohort, with $800 of the total.
Bluesky had announced last month that it would use some of its funds to fuel efforts in the developer ecosystem through the AT Protocol Grant Program. Financially, the program is fairly small, awarding only $10,000 in grants, with $4,800 already distributed. This is not enough to start a new company in this space, but it represents a way to encourage developers who might have wanted to delve into the new AT Protocol anyway. It also serves as an early signal of the kind of development work Bluesky supports — something that could help drive adoption among developers who have been previously (and repeatedly) burned by Twitter and its shifting priorities.
Other program recipients are also doing valuable work.
For example, Blacksky Algorithms builds a suite of services to provide customized monitoring services for Blacksky’s Black users. Others build Bluesky consumer applications, developer tools, analytics resources, and more.
But SkyBridge is particularly interesting because it could potentially open the small startup to a wider audience.
Unlike Mastodon and other decentralized applications supported by the older ActivityPub protocol, Bluesky is developing a new, decentralized social networking protocol. Unfortunately, for end users who have begun to explore the open source social networks popularly known as the “fediverse”, Bluesky’s decision to rely on a different protocol means that users must switch applications to access Bluesky’s network . They can’t use the preferred Mastodon app to browse Bluesky content, ie.
If successful, SkyBridge could change that, as it could translate Mastodon API calls into Bluesky API calls. The bridge is currently being tested in Ivory on iOS and Mac. is the Mastodon app from the company that previously developed a popular third-party Twitter app called Tweetbot. Notes the developer of SkyBridge @videah.net at Bluesky, the project is currently undergoing a major rewrite from Dart to Rust, so the GitHub repository hasn’t had much activity lately.
However, he believes the project is promising.
“It’s already proving much more stable, hoping to show it soon,” videh posted on Bluesky when you share the grant news.
Today, Bluesky has almost 5.6 million userswhile the wider fediverse supported by ActivityPub over 10 million users. Instagram Threads (which integrates with ActivityPub) now has more than 150 million monthly active users, Meta announced this week during earnings.
The move for the Bluesky and Mastodon bridge has been a topic of discussion recently. People have argued about how bridging should be done or whether a bridge should be built. Another software developer, Ryan Barrettwas the recipient of some backlash on GitHub while building another bridge called Bridgy Fed, which will be excluded by default – meaning that Mastodon’s posts will appear in Bluesky even if the post’s author hadn’t opted in. He revised his plans to create a traceable opt-in option, which would allow users to request to follow accounts on the various networks.
Backed by SkyBridge, Bluesky signals a desire to blur the lines between Mastodon and Bluesky.
Ultimately, people may not need to think about what protocol an application is running on, just like no one thinks about their email client using SMTP, POP3, or IMAP. And in an ideal outcome, people would be able to connect with friends on any social network, regardless of their background, and also see their friends’ responses in return.
