Our Plan for a Sustainably Open Social Network

Domains have so much potential as a personalized way to customize identities and as a decentralized way to verify reputation that builds off the existing web. For example, U.S. Senators have used the senate.gov domain to verify their identity on Bluesky without our involvement…The possibilities are wide in the domain-as-a-handle space.

Granted, this is often merely offloading identity verification to some other entity in the world — e.g. how does one get a senate.gov email? — but still I love it.

I’ve said it before, domains as internet handles will eventually break through. They’ll be the currency of online identity. Maybe I should’ve bought Google’s domain business…