Twitter Creates a Dedicated Crypto Team to Survey dApps

Twitter is creating a dedicated crypto team, indicating the latest plan by chief executive Jack Dorsey to adopt digital assets and decentralized apps and the thriving communities around them.

The social network has enlisted Tess Rinearson to head the latest Twitter Crypto team and "set the strategy for the future of crypto at (and on) Twitter." The team is set to be "a center of excellence for all things blockchain and web3", the firm added, regarding the term given to the rising number of decentralized apps that operate on public blockchains.

I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined Twitter, to lead a new team focused on crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies—including and going beyond cryptocurrencies.✨ pic.twitter.com/HaP0k5hUOq

— Tess Rinearson (@_tessr) November 10, 2021

Twitter said, "We're exploring ways to incorporate decentralized technologies into our products and infrastructure." The tech giant added that in the short term it was reviewing payments, ways for individuals creating content to get crypto, and the "decentralization of social media".

Dorsey, a popular Bitcoin enthusiast, has long stated that he wants to incorporate virtual assets into Twitter's future, following the successful launch of Bitcoin support to the payments firm, Square that he also controls. In September, the company announced that it was establishing a new tool that will enable users to send tips to peers for their content using Bitcoin. Twitter also said it was establishing a feature for verifying non-fungible tokens (NFTs), virtual collectibles that have grown in popularity this year and that some users on the platform use as their profile pictures.

Working under the firm's chief technology officer Parag Agrawal, Rinearson is mandated to oversee and create on these endeavors. Rinearson has in the past worked at crypto groups including Interchain, a group determined on creating open-source decentralized technologies. She also worked at Interstellar, a decentralized crypto wallet and exchange. The designation comes during rising speculation in Silicon Valley concerning the web3 movement, which aims to obstruct Big Tech firms that store user data on central servers with the intent to monetize the data.

The web3 ecosystem will allow decentralized apps to run on public blockchains. That way, data can't be collected by a single entity and users can get token-based rewards for their participation.

Many social networks including Twitter, Discord, and Reddit have announced that they are exploring ways to link with decentralized apps and adopt some of the concepts of web3 to their networks.

Rinearson said, "Twitter gets crypto, and its early integration of Bitcoin Tips and NFT authentication demonstrates that." She added, "There's so much more to explore to help people participate in the promise of an evolving, decentralized internet, directly on Twitter."

She will also be involved in Twitter's Bluesky, an independent project sponsored by Twitter and designed to create solutions on how to decentralize social media. The working group comprises Twitter staffers and external experts and is focused on creating a protocol upon which social networks and other developers can establish more customized offerings, to make them more inter-operational.

Additionally, developers intend to build a marketplace of moderation algorithms, at a time of heated debate concerning how user-generated content needs to be regulated. Still, experts have questioned Twitter's potential to use such a system to cannibalize its existing advertising-driven business model.