First.VIP Project Analysis：web3 Social Graph Lens Protocol
Lens Protocol, as an underlying protocol, provides developers with an open platform with several functional modules. Lens users fully own their data (NFTs) and they can bring it to any application built on top of Lens Protocol. In terms of the business logic, the project team builds and offers other applications with a general-purpose underlying protocol thus breaking data silos on the Lens ecosystem. Although most applications on the Lens ecosystem are imitations of Web2 applications, it takes time for a new social paradigm to be discovered and Lens Protocol has considerable room for development. In summary, it is suggested to keep an eye on this project.
Investment Summary
Lens Protocol is a social graph developed by the Aave team. It is an underlying protocol that provides several functional modules, and developers can develop various types of social applications such as social media platforms and forums that are built on top of the protocol. The protocol allows users to own their content (social data/social graphs) by storing it as NFTs and to bring their data to any application built on top of the protocol.
Lens Protocol has just gone live on the Polygon mainnet and only some applications with basic features similar to the ones introduced by Twitter and Reddit have been released. Mainstream users now cannot create profiles on the official website, while the Lens Protocol has gained some attention due to the holding of some whitelisting activities. Compared to similar projects, the Lens Protocol is more focused on building its own ecosystem. Its technology and products are more conducive for developers to build decentralized social applications, which meanwhile places high requirements on the team’s operational capabilities.
For ordinary users, their demand for decentralized social protocols is yet to be verified, and most of them are still using centralized social media which offers a better user experience. Besides, the risk of data misuse and other risks presented by centralized social media can be regulated and restricted by the law and related authorities. For blockchain projects such as Lens Protocol, their users are mainly Web 3 fans for now, and these projects are more like communities of crypto enthusiasts.
Lens Protocol is a feasible solution to address the issue of data silos. Breaking data silos is the narrative of decentralized social protocols. However, user data is now still stored in different contracts of different Web 3 projects on different ecosystems. Although these data are owned by users, they cannot “take them away”. While Lens builds an underlying protocol for other projects thus allowing data in projects built on top of Lens can be shared, thus breaking data silos on its ecosystem.
Perhaps protocols like Lens should not compete with Web2 projects directly from the very beginning. Web3 is a unique and thriving ecosystem. Based on DeFi and NFTs will make Lens a more distinctive project. It can explore a new path to decentralized social by relying on and developing with Web3.
Overall, Lens Protocol, as an underlying protocol, provides developers with an open platform with several functional modules. Lens users fully own their data (NFTs) and they can bring it to any application built on top of Lens Protocol. In terms of the business logic, the project team builds and offers other applications with a general-purpose underlying protocol thus breaking data silos on the Lens ecosystem. Although most applications on the Lens ecosystem are imitations of Web2 applications, it takes time for a new social paradigm to be discovered and Lens Protocol has considerable room for development.
In summary, the project is worth following.
Note: The final rating of [Yes]/[No] by First.vip is the result of a comprehensive analysis of the current fundamentals in accordance with project evaluation framework, rather than a prediction of the future price of the project token. There are many factors that affect token prices, and project fundamentals are not the only factor. Therefore, you should not assume that the project price will definitely fall just because the research report determines [No]. In addition, the development of blockchain projects is dynamic. Projects that we have judged as [No] will likely be adjusted to [Yes] if their fundamentals change significantly and positively, and vice versa, projects that we have judged as [Yes] may be adjusted to [No] if their fundamentals change significantly and viciously, and we will accordingly notify all members.
1. Overview
1.1 Project Profile
Lens Protocol is a social graph developed by the Aave team which allows anyone to create non-custodial social media profiles and develop new social media applications on top of it. The protocol is primarily used to help developers build Web 3 native social media. Any application built on top of Lens expands the social graph and benefits all the applications in the ecosystem.
- 2 Basic Information
2. Project Details
2.1 Team
Lens Protocol is developed by a few team members at Aave and their information is as follows[1].
Stani Kulechov, Founder
He graduated from the University of Helsinki with a Master’s Degree in Law, after which he occupied in the law realm and then founded his first firm in 2017 — Aave. He has rich experience in the blockchain and Fin-Tech field and delivered several speeches concerning blockchain (especially on topics related to Ethereum smart contracts) at conferences.
Josh Stevens, Senior Software Engineer
He graduated from Sheffield Hallam University and has 10+ years of experience in computer programming. He worked as a Full-stack Developer at Hypnotherapy Leicester, Green 4, FunFair, etc., and is proficient in multiple programming languages. He joined Aave in 2021 and is now the Staff Engineer at Aave.
Dani Martin Jimenez, Senior Software Developer
He graduated from UOC in Spain with a degree in IT and has 10+ years of development experience. He was a Web Developer at alfa9, Lavinia Interactiva, UOC, etc., and was an Android Developer and an iOS Developer at Addfleet and Drivania International respectively. In addition, he co-founded data technology firms such as Domothings and Skopery.
Alan Donoso Naumczuk, Software Engineer (Smart Contracts & Backend Development)
He graduated from ITBA University with a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering, and he was a Teaching Assistant at ITBA University. Besides, he worked as an Android Developer at Wolox and a Software Engineer at Mercado Libre. He joined Aave in 2021.
Márk Zsibók, IT Assistant
He worked as an IT Specialist at National CyberSecurity Center in Hungary. He is now working as the Senior Security Engineer at ZGEN and is also a developer of Lens Protocol.
Vladimir Yumatov, DevOps Engineer
She graduated from Saint Petersburg State University with a degree in Software Engineering and joined Aave in September 2021 and is now the DevOps Engineer at Aave.
Lens Protocol was designed and developed by members of the We3 community[2], subsequently, the team directly submits its code into Aave’s repositories on GitHub[3]. According to the information on GitHub, there are a total of 12 developers who participate in the development of the Lens Protocol. Backed by the Aave team, the Lens Protocol has good human resources.
2.2 Funding
The Lens team has not conducted any public funding activities. However, since the Lens Protocol is backed by Aave, it should have sufficient funds.
2.3 Code
The Lens Protocol’s code is fully open-sourced on GitHub. The project has been developed since this January. The team frequently submitted the code in March and April, with an average of 10–15 code commits per day. In terms of the developers, the Lens Protocol has ~4 code authors for code commits and code changes per day.
2.4 Technology
2.4.1 Architecture
Users play two main roles in the Lens Protocol: publishers and followers. These two roles are not necessarily independent, and the publisher can also be a follower of another user. Each user can create a profile, and they will receive a sequentially ID’d profile NFT. This NFT controls the profile, and thus, its owner becomes the de facto controller of the given profile.
Profile owners (publishers) can:
1) Publish to the profile. Publication types are:
Post: A standard piece of content.
Reference: A standard piece of content with a pointer to another publication. Since references include a pointer, this executes the pointed publication’s “reference module” logic, if any.
Mirror: The equivalent of a “share” in a traditional sense, having no content but a pointer to another publication. Since mirrors only include a pointer, this executes the pointed publication’s “reference module” logic, if any.
2) Set the profile’s “follow module”: This whitelisted logic contract determines the logic that must be executed when a wallet attempts to follow the given profile. For example, some followers may incur a fee to the profile owner via the fee follow module contract.
3) Set the profile’s image URI
4) Set the profile’s “dispatcher”: This is an address that can act on behalf of a profile’s owner and it can publish to the given profile and set the given profile’s URI.
Regular wallets (followers) can:
1) Follow profiles: This executes the profile’s “follow module” logic, if any, and creates a Follow NFT for the user. Follow NFTs have a custom URI set by profile owners.
2) Collect publications: This mints the collecting wallet a “collect NFT” unique to that publication and sequentially ID’d. This executes any logic in the publication’s “collect module”. If the publication is a mirror, this is executed on the originally mirrored publication with a referral. Collect NFT URIs point to the collected publication’s URI.
2.4.2 Modules
Modules are an integral part of the Lens Protocol: They allow profile owners to include unique, custom functionality on follow, collect and reference (i.e., mirrors and comments). Modules are whitelisted smart contracts that adhere to a specified interface which are called at defined execution steps. In other terms, modules present code akin to “hooks” that are run at predetermined points. There are three types of modules: Follow Modules, Collect Modules, and Reference Modules.
Follow Modules: Follow modules are called when a user attempts to follow a profile. Profile owners can set their follow module at profile creation and can change it at any time thereafter. Profile owners can also opt to have no follow module, allowing anyone to follow them any number of times. These modules allow for logic such as a “fee-on-follow” or even a “subscription” mechanism.
Collect Modules: Collect modules are called when a user attempts to collect a given profile’s publication. Unlike follow modules, these are set once at publication creation and are immutable once the publication is live. Furthermore, all publications must have a collect module attached to them.
Reference Modules: Reference modules are called when a profile attempts to reference a given profile’s publication. Similar to collect modules, these are set once at publication creation and are immutable too. However, unlike collect modules, publications can opt to have no reference module, allowing any profile to comment on or mirror the publication. Custom rule sets can be built for reference modules. For example, users can allow specific Follower NFT ID holders to comment and follow. In addition, reference modules include separate functions for validating mirrors and comments, so the rules can be different for each.
2.5 Products
The Lens Protocol is an open and composable social graph. It provides different functional modules based on ERC-721 NFTs. Besides, users are allowed to develop other modules based on the protocol and develop applications on top of it.
The Lens team identified the main problems in existing social media networks as follows: Web2 networks all read from their unique, centralized database. There is no portability; users’ personal information and data are locked to a specific network and owned by the network operator[5]. Lens Protocol corrects this by being a user-owned, open social graph that any application can plug into. Since users own their data, they can bring it to any application built on top of Lens Protocol. In addition, the Lens Protocol records data and information generated by users in social networks in the form of NFTs for the purpose of user ownership and control of personal data.
2.5.1 Protocol Functions
The Lens Protocol is based on the NFT technical architecture, which records all user behavior in NFTs. It provides 3 main functions: Profile, Publication, and Follow.
Profile
The Profile NFT is the main object in the Lens Protocol. After creating a profile, the user will receive a sequentially ID’d profile NFT, which contains the history of all of the posts, mirrors, comments, and other content the user generates. An address can contain multiple ProfileNFTs. It is ownership over NFTs that gives users control of their content.
Publication
Publications are all of the original content, comments, and mirrors produced by creators, curators, and users alike. Publications are posted directly to a user’s ProfileNFTs, thus they are truly owned by users.
Comment: Comments allow users to provide additional commentary on other publications. Like publications, comments live in the user’s Profile NFT and therefore are wholly owned by the user. However, since comments reference other publications, they are subject to the original publication’s Reference Module conditions.
Mirror: They are the protocol’s equivalent to reposting or re-amplifying content. Mirrors are treated the same as publications with a few additional checks and a few more minor features. Since mirrors reference other publications, they are subject to the conditions of the original publication’s Reference Module. If a publication has a reference module that limits mirrors only to accounts that follow the original poster, and the mirroring account does not hold a Follow NFT, the transaction to mirror will fail.
Collect: Collects allow creators to monetize their content (give value to Collect NFTs). Creators have ownership of their posts, and when their fans mint Collect NFTs, it is equivalent to purchasing that content. When a user posts a publication to their Profile NFT, they have the option to set a Collect Module.
Follow
“Following” on the Lens Protocol differs from following in Web 2 social applications. When users follow a profile on the Lens Protocol, they are given a Follow NFT, which creators and communities can encode with additional value. Profiles NFTs can attach a particular Follow Module to each ProfileNFT. For example, a profile could attach a follow module that requires a user to pay 5 MATIC to receive a Follow NFT. The ID of each newly issued Follow NFT for given profile increments by 1, such that the first follower’s NFT has an ID of 1; the tenth has an ID of 10, and so on.
Additionally, Follow NFTs have built-in governance capabilities, such as vote delegation, to allow for the creation of Social DAOs using the Lens Protocol. Creators, DAOs, or other organizations can create voting strategies using Follow NFTs and their various properties. For example: “The first 1000 follows have one vote each” or “The longer you have followed, the more voting power you have.”
2.5.2 Ecosystem
Breaking data silos is the narrative of decentralized social protocols. However, user data is now still stored in different contracts of different Web 3 projects on different ecosystems. Although these data are owned by users, they cannot “take them away”. While Lens builds an underlying protocol for other projects thus allowing data in projects built on top of Lens can be shared, thus breaking data silos on its ecosystem.
The Lens Protocol is an underlying protocol for building social applications, on top of which the team has developed applications and allows other developers to develop their applications, as well as has held Hackathons. There are currently 115 applications displayed on its official website, of which 11 are featured projects (in Figure 2–3). They are social media, analytic tools, and community tools covering data, art, videos, music, images, and other fields.
Projects Made by the Lens Team: LENSFRENS is developed by the Lens team and the others are applications built by developers in the community. Currently, in LENSFRENS, users can view all profiles created by Lens users. After connecting wallets, users can follow/unfollow them. At present, only whitelisted users can create their profiles on Lens and other users can only perform operations such as follow/unfollow.
Features offered by projects made by the Lens team are quite basic and simple and the Lens team launched these applications mainly for testing and to provide technical support for developers on the ecosystem. Therefore, projects developed by developers in the community outshine projects made by the Lens team in terms of user experience and practicality.
Applications Developed by Developers in the Community: Comparatively speaking, the applications built by developers in the community have more comprehensive features and are more mature. Besides, most of them are copycats of Web2 applications. Lenster, for example, is a Twitter-like application on which users can browse posts published via the Lens Protocol, and perform operations such as comments, mirrors, and likes. At present, Lenster has 24,200 Twitter Followers. IRIS is also a similar front-end product that also offers features such as follow and collect.
Besides, there are applications such as Lenstube and Lensta that resemble YouTube and Instagram. Most social applications currently on the Lens ecosystem are imitations of Web2 applications, while there are projects placing their focus on SocialFi. PHAVER is a social mobile application that allows users to earn token rewards by posting and sharing interesting content and it has 55,000 Twitter followers.
At present, most Web3 applications are only available on the webpage or PCs. However, most users still prefer to use applications on their mobile devices and mobile applications outperform applications on PCs in terms of convenience and user experience. The number of users using Web2 social applications increases along with the development of smartphones. Therefore, the Lens team also developed mobile applications.
In addition to Phaver, there is a decentralized social media mobile app called ORB on the Lens ecosystem. In comparison to other blockchain projects, the access threshold for users to use ORB is low. Users can download the app on their mobile devices and all the content they post goes on-chain. In addition to providing basic features offered by most social applications, ORB provides a Learn & Get NFTs feature that allows users to receive NFT rewards by learning Web3 expertise every day. On December 5, 2022, Lens Protocol acquired Sonar (an NFT mobile game) that has over 1,000 NFT holders and the trading volume of NFTs is 49 ETH[6]. Along with this acquisition, the startup’s executives will join Aave to build its mobile consumer-facing social applications powered by Lens.
Since the Lens Protocol is still in its infancy, many products have only introduced features similar to the ones on web forums. In addition, only whitelisted users can create profiles currently. As far as the user experience is concerned, most of the products can be used, while they run slowly while connecting wallets and the network. Besides, compared to traditional social applications such as Twitter, Lens still needs to launch products with more features. Furthermore, whether the protocol can carry a huge amount of data after Lens allows everyone to create profiles on the platform remains to be seen. However, as an underlying protocol, Lens Protocol is able to address the issue of data silos and allows users to switch between and use different applications more conveniently and seamlessly. While it may take a long time for a new social paradigm to be found.
Overall, these applications are still in the early stages of development and many products have only introduced features similar to the ones on web forums. Besides, currently, only whitelisted users can create profiles on the protocol. Compared to Web2 social media platforms such as Twitter, it is hard for Lens to make breakthroughs in user experience. Furthermore, whether the protocol can carry a huge amount of data after Lens allows everyone to create profiles on the platform remains to be seen. However, as an underlying protocol, Lens Protocol is a feasible solution to address the issue of data silos to allow users to switch between and use applications on its ecosystem seamlessly and conveniently. However, it takes a long time for a new social paradigm to be found.
In summary: The Lens Protocol is a decentralized social graph developed by Aave. The protocol allows users to own their content by storing it as NFTs and to bring their data to any application built on top of the protocol. The project team provides several functional modules to users and allows developers to develop new modules and applications on top of it. The Lens Protocol has just gone live on the Polygon mainnet and only some applications with basic features similar to the ones introduced by Twitter and Reddit have been released. Besides, only whitelisted users can create profiles on the protocol.
3. Development
3.1 History
3.2 Current Status
The Lens Protocol has just gone live on the Polygon mainnet on 17 May 2022. At present, only whitelisted users can create their profiles and other users can only perform operations such as follow/unfollow. According to the data on Dune Analytics[7], there are nearly 100,000 profile owners.
There are nearly 650,000 posts and 266,000 comments. Among these posts, there are some posts that have 10,000+ collects. Besides, there are several accounts that have 10,000+ followers.
In terms of applications, there are 115 applications that have been built on top of Lens, of which 11 are featured projects. They are social media, analytic tools, and community tools covering data, art, videos, music, images, and other fields.
In addition to developing applications, Lens actively reaches partnerships with other projects. For instance, Lens cooperates with Klima and Toucan to introduce the whitelisting activity to onboard more users to its protocol. Generally speaking, Lens receives some attention due to the holding of some whitelisting activities.
3.3 The Future
The Lens Protocol is a social graph and the project team has completed the development of the underlying technical framework. Besides, it has provided several modules and the API to help developers to develop application on top of it. In terms of the business logic, the project team builds and offers other applications with a general-purpose underlying protocol thus breaking data silos on the Lens ecosystem. Therefore, the project team places its focus on developing the ecosystem.
In summary: After months of development, the Lens Protocol has just gone live on the Polygon mainnet on 17 May 2022 and has launched several applications. However, since only whitelisted users can now create profiles on the Lens Protocol, the current operational data may not be authentic and comprehensive enough. In the future, the focus of the Lens team will still be placed on the incubation of applications, which can be paid follow-up attention to.
4. Tokenomics
NFTs minted by the Lens Protocol are only used to store user information, and the Lens team has not yet released the ERC-20 economic token or governance token.
In summary: Stani, the founder of Aave, believes that the current focus of the Lens Protocol should be placed on technical development. Therefore, the Lens team does not have plans to issue tokens for the time being.
5. Competition
The Lens Protocol is a decentralized social protocol.
5.1 Overview
The social graph is a sociological concept, usually referring to social relations between entities. In short, it is a model or representation of a social network[10]. The term was popularized at the Facebook F8 conference in 2007, when it was used to explain how the newly introduced Facebook platform would take advantage of the relationships between individuals to offer a richer online experience. The definition has now been expanded to refer to a social graph of all Internet users.
After the F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook, has often touted Facebook’s goal of offering the website’s social graph (Graph API) to other websites so that a user’s relationships can be put to use on websites outside Facebook’s control. However, in Web 2, mainstream social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all adopt centralized databases, while users’ data across different platforms cannot be shared with each other. In addition, although there are privacy laws, many users are not in control of their data due to commercial monopolies, and data misuse remains an acute issue (e.g., the Facebook Cambridge Analytica data scandal).
Hence, with the development of blockchain technology, many projects such as Cyber Connect, Bluesky, and the Lens Protocol have designed decentralized social media solutions. They all employ blockchain technology to allow users to have ownership of their data.
5.2 Competitors
Cyber Connect
Cyber Connect is a decentralized social graph protocol that aims to return the ownership and utilities of social graph data back to users while providing an infrastructure for all Web 3 developers to integrate and build upon. Its social graph module and recommendation indexer provide a common data layer to insert meaningful and context-specific social features. Embedded DApps can access Cyber Connect’s social graph data, while users have the right to determine whether these applications can access their data. At present, in Cyber Connect, after connecting wallets, users are allowed to connect their Twitter, OpenSea, and Mirror accounts to perform actions such as follow and comments. Additionally, Cyber Connect plans to introduce CyberChat, an instant messaging social software, to expand its social graph applications.
Atem Network
Atem is a Web 3 social platform designed to build a user-owned group space based on tokens and NFTs, and users can chat, trade and govern in the group space. Atem Network aims to build a decentralized social graph in a Web 3 chatbox. Under the context of Web 3, Atem is able to merge social graphs on different platforms, including social media, games, and even DApps. Its long-term mission is to build personal and group social graphs and become the go-to one stop solution for the social infrastructure of Web 3.
In Atem, group spaces are formed based on mutual tokens or NFTs that are owned by individuals. Only holders have the right to join and speak up in the community. All spaces and channels will be under DAO governance, which means users co-decide the rules of the communities. Data is stored in a decentralized way with end-to-end encryption, which guarantees complete anonymity, thus users are in control of their data, identity, and governance. With Atem as a solution, users can not only chat with each other like in traditional chatrooms, but send tokens and NFTs as well. Atem’s one-stop solution allows users to trade tokens and NFTs seamlessly in one place without the need to leave the chat room and log onto another exchange platform to perform the transaction. Besides peer-to-peer chat, Atem can also group users automatically into communities based on tokens or NFTs they own.
Relation
Relation Labs is building a multi-chain decentralized Web 3 social graph that aims to empower Web 3 data producers with 100% ownership, allowing everyone to create and harvest data value in the Web 3 ecosystem in an open and simple way.
The multi-chain addresses users add on the Relation One social DApp will quickly define their Web 3 personality tags and help them build a network of friends. On Relation, users can easily create Relation IDs with complete ownership of a privacy-protected data space. They will be the ones to manage data permissions and decide what is to be stored in the space, including contacts, smart contract wallets, DApps licenses, owned NFTs, and more. If they are willing to provide data value to DApps or related interests by giving authorization, they can also earn tokens for the data they contribute. Relation Labs has also developed Relation Graph, a smart contract graph database written and deployed in the Rust language. As the core engine of Relation Link Tool Suite, Relation Graph makes it easier and faster for developers to find, connect, analyze, and gain insights into Web 3 relational data.
DeSo
DeSo is a new layer-1 blockchain built from the ground up to scale decentralized social applications to users and it aims to become a decentralized version of Twitter. DeSo has higher throughput than other blockchains, with extensive custom storage and indexing logic customization to support complicated social media data, such as posting, profiles, followers, predictions, and other functions.
In DeSo, every user’s profile is stored on-chain and is solely controlled by the user’s private keys, making their identity portable between all applications in the DeSo ecosystem. In addition, NFTs minted on DeSo are associated with the artist’s profile, and can be shown off on the buyer’s profile, enhancing provenance while making them inherently social, and more valuable.
BBS Network
BBS Network is a decentralized social network similar to Reddit, where users can create forums to post, comment, and share ideas while generating revenue from their content. Like other platforms, anyone can create a BBS. Unlike other platforms, every BBS can be run on its own unique domain and choice of operator, while still linking to all the other BBSes in the network. All revenue from ads and NFT purchases are shared automatically and transparently between those who add value to the ecosystem, with many ways to contribute and benefit.
Every post is actually an NFT that users can create, buy, sell and collect revenue from the ad space on posts they own. Whether a post is “Hot” or not is determined by the post’s price. This incentivizes users to promote high-quality content that will generate impressions & engagement, and provides an innovative and manipulation-resistant method of content curation. Every BBS owner sets their own community’s moderation rules and content policies, and users choose freely which boards to visit and engage with that meet their needs. In addition, BBSes can be customized and enhanced using plug-in modules.
5Degrees
5Degrees is a Web 3.0 native social protocol incubated by TokenPocket that aims to build user relationship graphs and socialize all DApps. Based on the ERC-1155 standard, 5Degrees capitalizes the user’s core data to generate NFTs (that is, “Follow” an address is equivalent to minting a token with this address as the ID). 5Degrees adopts complete storage on-chain and has convenient cross-chain compatibility supported by ERC-1155.
Users can master and “carry” their own social relationships on-chain through 5Degrees; Besides, project developers no longer need to worry about user relationships’ inaccessibility and can use the permissionless relationship network to develop products. For example, a social module can be added to Uniswap, thus all users can directly track the transaction of the account addresses they are concerned about. Currently, 5Degrees has launched personal homepage products Fans3.0, Uniswap, and PancakeSwap with social modules and Web 3 Social Bridge.
5.3 Analysis of Competitive Elements
Unlike social networks in Web 2, most social applications in Web 3 allow users to gain ownership of their personal data via blockchain and cryptography technologies. Among them, 5Degrees, BBS Network, Atem, and the Lens Protocol all use the NFT technology, i.e., they all store users’ personal data into NFTs. Cyber Connect, DeSo, Bluesky, and Relation, on the other hand, use blockchain and cryptography technologies to achieve the decentralization of personal information.
Among these projects, Cyber Connect, Atem, Relation, 5Degrees, and the Lens Protocol are projects that focus on the social graph, i.e., they will launch products that target users’ social relationships. And the remaining are the decentralized versions of traditional social media platforms using blockchain technology. In comparison, social graph projects will be more complicated than ordinary decentralized social media projects, because the former includes features such as decentralized social media and forums.
Among these decentralized social graph projects, different projects have different developmental directions and solutions. Cyber Connect aims to return the ownership and utilities of social graph data back to users while providing an infrastructure for all Web 3 developers to integrate and build upon. Atem is designed to build a user-owned group space based on tokens and NFTs. Users who hold the same type of NFTs can join the same group. Its target user group is mainly users in its communities. Both Relation and Cyber Connect are attempting to build decentralized social graph databases, while Relation puts more effort to allow users to store more types of information such as NFTs in the database. 5Degrees mainly provides social graph technology to other DApps, and users in different DApps are interconnected via addresses.
Among these projects, the Lens Protocol is more focused on building its ecosystem. It is an underlying decentralized social graph that allows developers to develop applications such as social media platforms and chat rooms, while users’ social relationships can be seamlessly interconnected among these applications. In comparison, Web 3 social applications are more likely to be created via Lens-based technology; however, projects like Cyber Connect perform better in terms of their interaction with other projects. But at the same time, a demanding requirement has been placed on the Lens team’s operational and development abilities to incubate more applications to build and enrich the ecosystem.
In addition, since many projects are in their infancy, it may take some time for the sector to develop before a more comprehensive conclusion can be drawn concerning their business performance and operational data.
In summary: The decentralized social sector is still in its early stages of development. Some projects are the decentralized versions of traditional social media platforms, while some projects (e.g., Lens) are working towards the social graph realm. In comparison, social graph projects will be more complicated than ordinary decentralized social media projects, because the former includes features such as decentralized social media and forums. However, there are some social graph projects such as Cyber Connect that focus on the development of underlying social graph technology to integrate with other projects. Lens Protocol, on the other hand, is an underlying decentralized social graph that incubates its own decentralized social applications. Lens’ products and technology are more developer-oriented, facilitating developers to build decentralized social applications, rather than adding social features to other projects.
6. Risks
Privacy Risk: Users often need their wallet addresses to log in to decentralized social protocols, while since on-chain data are transparent to all, privacy issues may arise when users’ wallet addresses are associated with their social graphs.
Business Risk: At present, only whitelisted users can create Profiles on Lens, and there are some users who sell their Profiles on OpenSea. For mainstream users, at present, the only way for them to experience more features offered on Lens is to purchase Profiles on OpenSea, while they cannot buy Profiles with their own names, which is not very friendly to mainstream users.
References
Lens Protocol Documentation
An Analysis of the Web 3 Social Sector, ChainCatcher, https://www.chaincatcher.com/article/2073276
An Analysis of Web 3 Social Protocols and Potential Airdrop Opportunities, YourAirdrop.Eth, https://twitter.com/OdailyChina/status/1534121807514505217
Foresight News, https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/5188, https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/6505
[1] https://github.com/aave/lens-protocol
[3] https://github.com/aave/lens-protocol
[4] https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/6505
[5] https://docs.lens.xyz/docs
[6] Source: OpenSea
[7] https://dune.com/niftytable/Lens
[8] https://dune.com/niftytable/Lens
[9] https://dune.com/niftytable/Lens
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graph
[11] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Social_graph.gif
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This report is drafted from the date indicated. As market or economic conditions may change from time to time subsequently, the content of this report may not necessarily reflect such changes. The graphs, charts and other visual aids are provided for information purposes solely, none of which should be relied upon as investment decisions. First.vip will not assist anyone in making investment decisions and no graph, chart or other visual aid can capture all of the factors and variables required to make such decisions.
Some of the statements in this report may contain First.vip’s future assumptions and other forward-looking views. With known & unknown risks and uncertainties, actual results, performance or events may differ materially from the views and assumptions expressed in the statements.
Any speculations, forecasts and estimates contained in this report are speculative and are based on certain assumptions. These forward-looking statements may prove to be inaccurate and may be affected by inaccurate assumptions, known/unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, most of which are beyond our control. It can be anticipated that some or all of these forward-looking assumptions will not be realized or will differ materially from actual results.
