$10 Million Boost: Twitter co-founder and Block CEO Jack Dorsey is not just creating new social apps like Bitchat and Sun Day and he has also invested $10 million to support experimental open-source projects and tools that could change the future of social media.
This work is being done through an online group called “and Other Stuff,” started in May. The team includes with Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s first employee with Evan Henshaw-Plath, Calle (creator of e-cash platform Cashu), Alex Gleason (former engineering head at Truth Social), and Jeff Gardner (early employee at Intercom).
From Nostr to ActivityPub
The group first came together while working on Nostr, an open and “apolitical” social media protocol. Nostr has been the focus of Jack Dorsey since he sold Twitter and stepped down from the board of Bluesky.
Now, the team plans to explore with other open tools as well, such as ActivityPub (used by decentralized apps like Mastodon) and Cashu, a privacy-focused e-cash platform.
Jack Dorsey’s Team Rejects Big Tech Model, Embraces Open Innovation
In recent years, Jack Dorsey has become more critical of traditional social media. He has said that Twitter should never have been a company, and that Bluesky is repeating some of the same mistakes made at Twitter.
Because of this, the team behind “and Other Stuff” has decided not to build a company. Instead, they work like a “community of hackers,” says Evan Henshaw-Plath. Their goal is to create open tools and technologies — from new social apps to developer tools and libraries — that others can use to build their own platforms.
One example is an app they’ve built called Shakespeare. It’s similar to the app-building tool Lovable but designed for building Nostr-based social apps with AI assistance.
The group is also behind several other projects, including:
- Heynow – a voice note app built on Nostr
- Cashu Wallet – a privacy-focused digital wallet
- White Noise – a private messaging app
- +Chorus – a Nostr-based social community
These are in addition to the other apps already launched by Jack Dorsey, as the team continues to grow its open-source and decentralized tech ecosystem.
AI Is Powering the Next Web: Henshaw-Plath on the Rise of Hacker-Led Innovation
According to Evan Henshaw-Plath, recent progress in AI-based coding has made it easier to build and test new ideas—just like Ruby on Rails, Django, and JSON did during the rise of Web 2.0.
Jack Dorsey on Why Twitter Should’ve Been a Protocol, Not a Company
$10 Million Boost: In a podcast chat, Dorsey explains his vision for the open, ad-free social media and why he’s backing platforms like Nostr over Bluesky
Jack Dorsey (who now lives in Costa Rica) and Evan Henshaw-Plath (in New Zealand) met at a hackathon in Switzerland to record the first episode of Henshaw-Plath’s podcast, revolution.social with @rabble. In the hour-long talk, Dorsey looked back at Twitter’s journey and shared his thoughts on where social media went wrong—and how it can be fixed.
“It took me a long time to realize this… Twitter shouldn’t have been a company. It should have been a protocol,” Dorsey said.
He explained that when Twitter became a company, it had to focus on making money—especially from advertisers. This business model, he said, clashed with what Twitter could have been: an open platform that anyone could build on. He said advertisers had too much power, and their influence could hurt the platform’s freedom.
“They can just remove the money, and your revenue disappears,” Dorsey said.
“If Twitter had been an open protocol, people could still build strong businesses around it—without being controlled.”
Dorsey tried to fix this by starting a project inside Twitter to build an open protocol. That project later became Bluesky. However, he now feels Bluesky is facing the same problems because it is funded by venture capital and still has a company-like structure.
“I like [Bluesky CEO] Jay Graber and the team,” Dorsey said,
“but I don’t agree with the structure. I want to move in a direction more like Bitcoin—completely open and not owned by anyone.”
That’s why Dorsey is now were supporting Nostr, an open social media protocol he believes has the potential to truly stay free from corporate control.
In future podcast episodes, Evan Henshaw-Plath will speak with several well-known voices in tech and media. Guests will include:
- Journalists Kara Swisher and Taylor Lorenz
- Former Twitter Trust & Safety head Yoel Roth
- Substack co-founder Chris Best
- Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine
- Writer and activist Cory Doctorow (who coined the term “enshittification”)
- Misinformation expert Renée DiResta
Meanwhile, the “and Other Stuff” team is creating a “Social Media Bill of Rights”—a document outlining what users should expect from social media platforms. It covers key areas like:
- Privacy
- Security
- Transparency
- Interoperability
- Self-governance
- Portability
- Identity protection
The goal is to keep platforms were like Bluesky and others with accountable to their users, even when they face outside pressure from governments or advertisers.
Thanks to Jack Dorsey’s $10 million investment, the nonprofit has launched successfully. Dorsey also helped build the first iOS apps, while other team members are working on Android versions, developer tools, and new experimental platforms.
And there’s more to come.
“There are things that we’re not ready to talk about yet that’ll be very exciting,” says Henshaw-Plath.
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