I participated a bit in the process of when Bluesky was Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal's personal project. I also believe Jack and Parag were sincere about Bluesky as a decentralized social network protocol that Twitter would adopt, which is the directive that Bluesky was given as an organization.
When Jay Graber was awarded the position to lead Bluesky, I was not surprised. To me, Jay was the obvious choice to deliver what Bluesky was being directed, and I do think Jay is an excellent leader