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Guest Talk with Jay Graber | Q&A Hosted by Venkatesh Rao

LectureJay Graber, Daniel Holmgren
Guest Talk with Jay Graber | Q&A Hosted by Venkatesh Rao

Jay Graber (CEO) and Daniel Holmgren (Protocol Lead) of Bluesky discuss building the AT Protocol as a 'hybrid' alternative to both maximalist peer-to-peer decentralization and traditional centralized platforms, emphasizing that decentralization is 'a function of administrative control, not network topology' (quoting advisor Martin Kleppmann). They explain concepts like self-certifying repositories (DIDs, PDS), stackable/composable moderation as 'building blocks' rather than monolithic trust-and-safety, and contrast their 'schematic web' schema approach (Lexicon) with RDF/semantic web ontologies, arguing protocol entrepreneurship requires balancing fast app iteration with slow, methodical protocol design.

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