# Protocol Reader

Source: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/protocol-reader
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Protocol-Reader?index=0x67b1b3fefc687c311a692877b63dddcf8b7d5c8a2bfc0cd57a95ccf1f6e03b71b8ff6fd3
Submitted by misha on 2025-02-16 UTC, 7 upvotes, 5 comments

## Summary

In fall 2022, after the change of ownership at Twitter, a significant minority of users, perhaps several million, looked for an alternative technology paradigm rather than another product or platform. The article says they found a class of Twitter alternatives that describe themselves as protocols. Most other departing users, it says, moved to products such as Meta's Threads, Substack or LinkedIn, or retreated to private online spaces.

## Comments

**misha**: This is a lot of great reading, two years of research, a volume of 26 essays and 2 fiction pieces has now been released as an ePub. I had the physical protocol kit distributed to me as it came out, but now rereading it as the ePub. I highly recommend downloading and spending the Sunday delving in. 

**ccarella.eth**: Incredible share. Will put this on my kindle for travel.

**zinkk.eth**: Thanks for sharing this treasure trove! A tip for those more audible-inclined: you can import the epub to ElevenReader app and have it read by a human-like voice for free, just like an audiobook.

**zinkk.eth**: > "Now entering its third year, Summer of Protocols was initially funded by the Ethereum Foundation, and motivated by a relatively narrow but fiendishly difficult sociotechnical challenge—the problem of consciously “ossifying” the Ethereum blockchain: managing the tension between the desire to keep adding tempting new features and the opposed desire to converge on a minimal reliable functional scope, capable of lasting not merely years or even decades, but a centuryor longer. We hoped that by studying protocols in the broadest way we could conceive not only would we help an undertheorized subject reach a threshold of critical mass but, via oblique side effects, discover creative new ways to approach unprecedented planetary-scale challenges like managed ossification, climate change, and the rise of AI."

This challenge is still at the core of a lot of things happening in the blockchain world - how do we keep things safe and robust while iterating and innovating? I think it's a fascinating challenge!

**tazes.eth**: >This challenge is still at the core of a lot of things >happening in the blockchain world - how do we keep things >safe and robust while iterating and innovating? I think >it's a fascinating challenge!

don't mind me just checking how to quote