Copied! In this photo illustration, the logo of Bluesky is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a computer screen in Ankara, Turkiye on Septemer 04, 2024. © Photo by Hakan Nural/Anadolu via Getty Images Bluesky, the social media platform that’s seen tremendous growth over the past year, announced Thursday that the company raised a $15 million Series A round of financing, according to a post on the Bluesky website. The announcement also includes hints at what’s to come, including the possibility of subscriptions, payments, and other new features in the future. The new round of funding was led by Blockchain Capital, according to the Bluesky announcement on Thursday, along with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, and Amir Shevat of Darkmode. But Bluesky was quick to say in its announcement that it wasn’t really embracing crypto and had no plans to push tokens or NFTs on the platform. “This does not change the fact that the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.),” the company said in its release. Bluesky experiences a new wave of sign-ups whenever Elon Musk’s Twitter (now officially known as X) fucks up some element of the experience over there. Bluesky has added three million users in the past month alone, surging from 10 million users to 13 million, with much of that growth directly attributed to Musk’s legal shenanigans in Brazil and the recent announcement that the blocking function on X would soon be disappearing. What will be new after this latest round of funding? Bluesky recently introduced features like direct messages and video, two things that simply put it closer in line with the same things that X already offers. But there are some more expansive ideas on the horizon, including paid subscriptions for features like higher quality video uploads and profile customizations. But Rose Wang, the COO of Bluesky, said these paid features won’t allow someone to get boosted by Bluesky in some way, as it now does on X when someone buys a blue checkmark for $8 per month. Paid subscribers won’t get special treatment elsewhere in the app, like upranking premium accounts or blue checks next to their names. We won’t sell your data. And we won’t hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, NFTs, etc.).