Jack Dorsey's Decentralized Decade: From Bitcoin Lightning Network to Bluetooth Mesh
Judging from the current progress, Bitchat is still experimental, and its style may not be well accepted by users in this era, but it is full of creativity. Jack Dorsey also believes that in extreme scenarios such as future disaster relief, relying on ultrasonic, LoRa, or even WIFI networking can be used as a backup means of communication.
True Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is a more determined cryptopunk ambassador than Coinbase founder Armstrong. He has been investing in Bitcoin for at least 10 years, even when the investment outweighs the profit.
We can simply take the Bitcoin Lightning Network as an example. Jack launched the LDK development package, and even promoted Twitter to support the Lightning Network's payment function.
Furthermore, he is concerned about everything about Bitcoin, so after relaunching Bitchat, he also plans to support Nostr networking features in the future to support freedom of speech from the physical layer.
Reborn three times and rethink Bitcoin
Humans can use tens of KB computers to land on the moon, but they have to host a public chain with hundreds of gigabytes.
Jack Dorsey was one of Twitter's co-founders. Although financial products such as Cash App continued to be successful in his subsequent ventures, he never forgot about freer social networking and more decentralized networking methods.
BlueSky is one example. Although it's not as loud as Farcaster, I can be sure that this is not a work to generate money, but rather an exploration of the next generation of social product forms for humans.
So, Bitchat is here. Interestingly, Bitchat was also the name of two social networking products on the chain before, and I think Jack Dorsey paid a little tribute to it.
图片说明：三代 Bitchat 图片来源：@zuoyeweb3
• In 2019, based on Bitcoin's OP_RETURN operation code, @_unwriter made Bitchat, the first free Bitcoin on-chain social networking tool. In fact, it is the same as the inscription method. Writing information into the transaction notes is equivalent to posting a message on the Internet;
• In 2022, based on BSV's cheapness, TonicPow CEO Luke Rohenaz launched Bitchat, a real on-chain social networking product, sent messages and paid for use;
• In 2025, Jack Dorsey drew on the above two ideas and launched Bitchat based on a local Bluetooth mesh network with hardware support+free usage model. It can run completely offline, completely decentralized and censorship-resistant.
It's easy to find that the 2025 Bitchat drew on the idea of Bitcoin itself, but moved away from the idea that it must be done on the chain and moved to a scenario more suitable for ordinary people. You probably don't have a Bitcoin mining machine. After all, you are involved in a mining pool, but you must have a Bluetooth device.
This is in line with Satoshi's idea when he founded Bitcoin. According to Moore's Law, chips and storage devices will definitely become cheaper until everyone can participate in the operation of the Bitcoin network, but unfortunately, in the end, Bitcoin's value storage exceeds its actual function.
Jack Dorsey clearly thought about this issue. It is necessary to compress or even eliminate economic incentives in order to promote the use of ordinary people and avoid moving towards another path of centralization and capitalization.
As mentioned here, mesh can be used not only for Bluetooth networking, but also WIFI. Essentially, mesh is the “organization method” of the network, and Bluetooth, WIFI, and even Starlink are all “transmission methods” of the network, and Starlink Mesh can even theoretically be established.
Group chat offline first, maybe online in the future
Another way to live after wealth is free.
After carefully reading the documentation and code, I feel that there are strong traces of Vibe Coding, but OK, it reduces development and deployment costs, and also facilitates secondary development and improvement.
图片说明：群组安全 图片来源：Bitchat 技术白皮书
First of all, Bitchat is an offline, anonymous, free, IRC social networking tool. It's basically impossible to develop into a cryptocurrency project or follow the path of financing, so it's extremely pure, or unlikely to have a Clubhouse boom or Douyin forever.
• Offline: Bitchat stores and spreads messages entirely based on the local Bluetooth mesh network, which means it can work without any network signal, which is also the ideal working environment for Bitchat;
• Anonymous: Bitchat is extremely lightweight, and doesn't use a cloud storage network at all. Mesh devices are only stored online, so they don't design a permanent account system or a permanent data storage system, but the downside is that it can only be used as a chat room, basically saying goodbye to emoticons and audio and video;
• Free: Buying Bluetooth Mesh hardware is the only expense, but in this era of mobile phones, it can be said that Bitchat only needs to touch an existing device, and there are no paid features;
• IRC: Back to the group chat model in the Web 1.0 era. The interface of Bitchat's three generations is basically the same. Americans still love tools such as podcasts, Reddit, and email, which is also a difference between China and foreign countries.
In Bitchat's architecture, it can be classified into three parts: information transmission, privacy protection, and networking functions. Extreme simplicity brings ultimate focus. Information transmission emphasizes peer-to-peer and group mode, privacy protection uses cryptography to ensure security, and the networking function is left to be added later to WiFi/LoRa/ultrasound, or Nostr networking.
In terms of information transmission, Bitchat's information transmission is essentially suitable for peer-to-peer mode. Although it supports multi-point redirection or bridging of information, the efficiency will be greatly reduced, and the ideal Bluetooth Mesh can only be used within 30 meters.
Bitchat also carefully designed the group chat function, but it requires a more powerful Bluetooth mesh device. You can refer to similar Xiaomi products. The price of Bluetooth mesh components that support multiple devices is above 200 yuan, which determines that the group function will not be Bitchat's focus.
However, when it comes to privacy protection, Bitchat is still slightly complicated. For example, the group mode uses Argon2ID to resist potential side channel attacks, but memory consumption will increase. The algorithm itself is more used by high-density customers in finance, military, etc., and some functions are excessive for group protection.
However, this is an important lesson learned from Bitcoin. There is always better than nothing, and it is difficult to evaluate subsequent performance before large-scale practical application.
Judging from the current progress, Bitchat is still experimental, and its style may not be well accepted by users in this era, but it is full of creativity. Jack Dorsey also believes that in extreme scenarios such as future disaster relief, relying on ultrasonic, LoRa, or even WIFI networking can be used as a backup means of communication.
This one is pretty reliable. If the phone doesn't have a network, it's just a tile, but Bitchat turned the brick into a text walkie-talkie.
epilogue
What makes Crypto users most happy is probably not Bitchat's retro chat room style, but the possibility of connecting to Nostr. In Jack's vision, Mesh local networking+Nostr global networking creates a real, hardware-based, censorship-resistant social tool.
Maybe we don't believe it, but someone always has to try it.
