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Jack Dorsey’s $10 million commitment, reported in July 2025, backs And Other Stuff (AOS), a collective supporting open-source and decentralized technology projects. It is not a conventional investment in one new social network, and “ad-free” describes the ambition to reduce reliance on advertising—not a verified promise that every supported app will never show ads.
What did Jack Dorsey fund?
On July 16, 2025, TechCrunch reported that Dorsey had put $10 million toward an effort then called andOtherStuff and now presented as AOS. The reporting and AOS’s own description point to funding and support for a range of projects, rather than an equity investment in a single Twitter replacement. AOS says it does not run a conventional fund; it describes its work as supporting projects and stewarding a broader commons. See TechCrunch’s July 2025 report and the AOS about page.
The available materials do not give a detailed allocation of the $10 million, so it is not possible to say how much goes to any individual app, team, or infrastructure project. AOS describes a broad portfolio spanning social applications, messaging, developer tools, Bitcoin and ecash, and community infrastructure.
What is AOS building?
AOS is best understood as a collective supporting experiments across open technology, much of it connected to Nostr, rather than as one finished consumer network. Its public project list includes social and community products, messaging, creator tools, and software for developers. Projects AOS lists, supports, or stewards include:
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- Ditto and Flotilla, social and community tools built around Nostr.
- White Noise, a privacy-oriented messaging app using Nostr and the Messaging Layer Security protocol, and Marmot, a related encrypted group-messaging protocol.
- Chorus and diVine, projects for creators and audiences, including short-form social video.
- Shakespeare, an AI-assisted tool for building Nostr-based websites and social applications, and ngit, a Nostr-oriented code-collaboration tool.
- Agora and Zapstore, respectively an activist-oriented community tool and an open app-distribution project.
The list does not mean every project was created by AOS, is at the same stage of development, or receives a direct share of Dorsey’s commitment. The AOS project list is the place to check how the collective currently describes its work. For example, diVine’s release materials describe it as an open-source, Nostr-based social-video project.
What is Nostr, and how does it work?
Nostr is a communication protocol, not one company, app, or universal social feed. Its name comes from “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays.” In broad terms, users publish digitally signed events; relays store or pass those events, while client apps present them as posts, messages, or other features. Different clients can connect to different relays and make different choices about what to display.
This design can give developers room to build compatible services and users more choice about how they access a social identity. It does not guarantee that every app will show the same content, that an account will work identically everywhere, or that a user can easily recover access after losing the relevant keys.
- Clients are the apps people use to read or publish content. They may differ in features, feeds, filtering, and moderation.
- Relays help distribute and store events. Operators may set their own policies, and a relay can decline to carry certain content.
- Keys and identity can make an identity portable across compatible clients, but key management and recovery can be less familiar than resetting a password with one central provider.
Decentralization changes where control sits; it does not eliminate moderation, spam, harassment, misinformation, or illegal content. A service can be open at the protocol level while particular clients, relays, maintainers, or infrastructure providers still become important points of control.
Does “ad-free” mean these apps will never show ads?
No universal, permanent ad-free guarantee for every AOS-supported project is established by the public materials described here. The more defensible reading is that AOS and Dorsey favor systems that need not depend on advertising as their core source of revenue. The distinction matters: a specific app may be ad-free, but that is not the same as a commitment covering every project in a wider ecosystem.
Advertising is not interchangeable with open-source software, an open protocol, or decentralization. Those describe different things:
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- Ad-free experience: a particular app does not display conventional ads or sponsored posts.
- Non-ad-dependent model: a service earns money through other means, such as paid hosting, premium features, or support.
- Open protocol: third parties can build compatible services, subject to the protocol’s design and implementation.
- Open-source code: source code is available under terms that govern inspection, reuse, and modification. The precise license and completeness of the code need to be checked project by project.
- Decentralization: some meaningful aspect of identity, data, infrastructure, or decision-making is distributed rather than controlled by one organization.
Even a service without ads still has operating costs: software development, servers, bandwidth, storage, security, moderation, and user support. Open-source software can support commercial services, and users may encounter paid hosting or other fees. “Ad-free” does not mean “free to operate.”
How is AOS different from Bluesky and OpenSats?
These are separate efforts with overlapping interests in open technology. Dorsey’s connection to all three, and the repeated $10 million figure in two of the stories, can make them easy to confuse.
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| Effort | What it is | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Bluesky | Started as a Twitter-funded project in 2019; it later became an independent public-benefit company building around the AT Protocol. | It operates a prominent consumer-facing social app and centers on its own protocol ecosystem. See Bluesky’s account of its origins, its independence announcement, and its FAQ. |
| OpenSats | Announced a separate $10 million donation from Dorsey in 2023 to support free and open-source work related to Bitcoin, Nostr, and other technologies. | It is a funding organization, not AOS or a social app. See the OpenSats announcement and its Nostr Fund. |
| AOS | Dorsey’s $10 million commitment was reported in July 2025; AOS supports a broad collection of open technology projects. | It emphasizes a portfolio of experiments and tools, particularly around Nostr, rather than one main social app. See AOS. |
Bluesky and Nostr also should not be reduced to “centralized” versus “fully decentralized.” Both ecosystems involve organizations, software maintainers, service providers, and infrastructure operators. Their protocols, governance, and practical points of control differ. Bluesky has also discussed sustainability through services rather than relying solely on ads; its published business plan described an $8 million seed round and a services-led approach.
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Open protocols can let developers make specialized clients, feeds, and communities without depending on one company to approve every feature. They can also give users more choices about providers and interfaces. Those benefits are goals, not automatic results: they depend on working software, active maintainers, usable tools, and a sustainable way to pay for infrastructure and support.
- More choice can mean more setup. Users may need to select apps, relays, filters, and key-management methods instead of relying on one service’s defaults.
- Moderation becomes distributed, not unnecessary. Different clients and relay operators may enforce different rules, producing inconsistent experiences and making global enforcement difficult.
- Permissionless access brings abuse risks. Spam, impersonation, scams, and harmful content remain problems to manage.
- Portability depends on implementation. An open protocol can make compatible services possible, but migration, account recovery, and data continuity still depend on the tools and infrastructure available.
- Funding and governance remain questions. Readers evaluating any project should look at who maintains its code, operates key infrastructure, sets defaults, resolves disputes, and funds continued development.
For a developer, the appeal is the ability to build on shared protocols and adapt software. For a community, a Nostr-based tool may allow more control over its own spaces and moderation. For someone who wants a simple app with one accountable provider and predictable support, a fragmented ecosystem may be a poor fit. AOS’s $10 million can support work toward these options, but it does not by itself establish that the projects will reach mainstream scale or remain sustainable after the funding is spent.
What the $10 million does—and does not—tell us
The commitment is evidence of significant backing for open social and related technology, not proof of a coming mass-market replacement for X or Facebook. AOS’s public description points to support for developers, applications, protocols, infrastructure, and community work; no precise project-by-project budget is stated. Nor does the funding establish the legal status of every part of the initiative: while the 2025 report called it a nonprofit, AOS’s own materials describe a collective and say it does not run a conventional fund.
The practical test is whether these projects can combine the freedoms of open systems with dependable products, thoughtful moderation, clear governance, and a durable way to pay for their upkeep. That is the harder problem behind the headline—not simply whether a social app can remove ads.
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