The Lens Protocol: A Lens into the Future of Social Networks
What is Lens Protocol
The Lens Protocol is a composable Web3 social graph built on the Polygon Proof-of-Stake blockchain. It is developed to enable creators have control over the connections between themselves and their followers, establishing a completely flexible, user-owned social graph. Stani Kulechov, the founder of AAVE, started Lens Protocol. The protocol is designed with modularity in mind, ensuring that new features and fixes can be included without compromising the integrity of user-owned content and social relationships that are unchangeable.
Identification of a gap
The Web2 social graph structure suffers from several significant problems that limit its effectiveness and usability. Perhaps the most significant of these issues is centralization, which results in a lack of control and non-integrability across various social graph applications and entities.
This centralized structure means that the power and control over users’ data and social connections lie in the hands of a select few corporations that dominate the social media landscape. The non-integrability across various social graph applications and entities compounds these problems further. Users are unable to seamlessly connect and interact with friends and followers across different platforms, which can lead to fragmentation and disconnection within their social networks. This issue also makes it difficult for new social applications to gain traction and compete with established platforms.
Overall, these problems with the Web2 social graph structure highlight the need for a more decentralized and user-centric approach to social networking. By enabling users to own and control their data and connections, and by fostering interoperability across different platforms, The Lens Protocol is able to create an open and inclusive social graph structure that benefits all users.
How does the Lens Protocol solve this problem?
The Lens protocol system is able to solve this problem through its composability structure. Composability refers to the ability of different components or modules to be combined and work together in a flexible manner to create more complex systems or applications. It is a key principle of modular design and allows for greater flexibility, scalability, and reuse of code. It means that each component can be independently developed and updated and can be easily integrated with other components to create a complete and flexible solution. With one Lens profile, users of Lens protocol will be able to establish themselves and carry their community along across various social applications.
Why Polygon?
Traditional blockchains consume massive amounts of energy (fees and costs), leading to a high carbon footprint. But with Polygon’s innovative approach, they have developed an eco-friendly blockchain that requires significantly less energy consumption, reducing the carbon footprint of every transaction made on the platform.
The Lens Protocol Architecture
The Lens Protocol uses something called a Profile NFT as its main object. The Lens hub requires users to create a profile after which they may obtain the sequentially ID’d profile NFT. The owner of this NFT is hence de facto the controller of the specified profile and will be able to control it. When you own a Profile NFT, you have control over your content. Individual addresses own Profile NFTs, and an address can contain multiple Profile NFTs.
This Profile NFT created will be your key or entry into the Lens protocol ecosystem and grant you access to the wide array of social applications built on the protocol. This complex network of interconnected, entangled, and interoperable decentralized social platforms is already a component of Lens Protocol’s own collection of platforms and apps, which they refer to as a part of their “Lensverse.”
What makes the profile NFTs special is that they can be used to perform various interactions (like post, like, comment, mirror etc.) across all applications on the Lensverse. Each profile (Profile NFT) or content creator on the Lens hub can be followed and this will be retained across all the Lensverse apps. This means you don’t need to establish a new community every time you use a new social application. Rather, your community, contents, and interactions are all tied to your profile NFTs and all established onchain. Overall, it will allow for more efficient and cost-effective development, as well as faster innovation and customization.
For example, Address A owns a Lens protocol profile NFT called ‘Profile A’. Fifty different profiles love the contents of profile A and followed it. This followership/community will be retained across all the social apps used by profile A in the Lensverse and profile A can easily interact with its community across all of Lensverse social applications. Superb right!!!!!! Imagine being able to intergrate all your community, contents, and interactions across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, Whatsapp, and so much more under your single profile and interact with them all across these various apps with all these happening onchain.
Publications are very important for the Lens Protocol. They include original content, comments, and mirrors created by users. There are three types of publications: posts, comments, and mirrors. Posts are the main type, and comments and mirrors add more features. All publications are posted on a user’s Profile NFT to keep them in the user’s wallet and ownership. Although the publications are not NFTs.
Actions that can be performed by Profile NFTs
Set the profile’s follow module: This contract function controls what happens when someone tries to follow the particular profile. It decides if a fee needs to be paid to the owner of the profile through another contract called ‘fee follow module contract’ or the profile can be followed free of charge.
Follow other profiles: This will execute the follow module (whether free or paid) of the other profile.
Set the profile’s image URL.
Post: A profile can post any standard piece of content. This is the first type of publication in the Lens protocol.
Comment: A profile can comment on a piece of content. This is the second type of publication in the Lens protocol.
Mirror: In a traditional sense, is analogous to ‘share’. They are the protocol’s equivalent to reposting or re-amplifying content. This is the third type of publication in the Lens protocol.
Like: This is similar to the traditional ‘Like’ function on Web2 social apps
Collect: Creators may monetize their publications using collects. Because creators own their content via the Lens Protocol, they are able to allow their followers to purchase that content. The content can be collected as an onchain piece of NFT by interested and eligible individuals. However, there are different modules of the ‘Collect’ function and any Lens protocol NFT profile can determine the type of Collect module function it wants on its contents.
Types of Collect Function Modules
Depending on the choice of a content creator, there are various modules that can be executed to collect a content which are:
Free Collect: It allows any follower profile/address to collect the publication without paying any fee.
Fee Collect: It allows any follower to collect the publication while paying a fee set by the poster.
Limited Fee Collect: It allows any follower to collect the associated publication provided they pay a fee, and this publication is capped at a particular mint supply. This means limited amount of people can collect the content while also paying that fee.
Timed Fee Collect: It allows for any follower to collect the associated publication provided they pay a fee and within a specific time limit.
Limited Timed Fee Collect: It is essentially a combination of timed fee collect and limited fee collect modules. Followers can collect the associated content provided they pay a fee within a specific time limit and with a mint cap.
Revert Collect: It causes all collect activity on a given publication to fail, thus making the collection uncollectible.
Available Fee Options for Creators and Profiles on the Lens protocol
Wrapped Matic
Wrapped Ether
USD Coin
Dai Stable Coin
Toucan Protocol: Nature Carbon Tonne
The Referral Function
Any Collect function implemented on a mirrored content will also execute a referral function for the address that mirror the post. Simply, If you mirror a content for someone else to see and the address collect the content with a mint fee, you will get a certain referral commission set by the NFT profile that originally posted the content. This is because you help mirrored the profile’s content and gave the address a profitable visibility, hence your referral reward.
The Lensverse
Some of the social applications that has been integrated into the Lens protocol ecosystem includes:
Lenster: Lenster is a decentralized, and permissionless social media app built with Lens Protocol
LensTube: It is a decentralized video-sharing social media platform built with Lens Protocol
Re:Meme: Onchain meme generator
Others include: Buttrfly, Lensta, Orb, Dumpling TV, Onboard, Share, Yup, Fantastic, and Diverse HQ.
Relevant Links
