Lens Protocol
With all the drama around the Twitter takeover & its future features, I think it’s time to introduce you Lens Protocol, a novel Social Graph protocol built by @StaniKulechov & members of @AaveAave team to enable the core protocol layer for Web3 social applications.
What is Lens Protocol?
Lens is a social graph representing an Individual User & their network of relations. The Social Graph is not dependant upon any platform to maintain. Lens is not comparable to a facebook or twitter but a “Meta Social Network”, where the NFT profile is a logger.
Lens allows users to own their “Internet Identity” & associated publications. They have direct ways to monetize content to their audience.
Social Graphs are separated from platforms allowing users to fully own their connections, when Web2 Social Platforms are responsible for maintaining the users social graph.
How does Lens Protocol work?
Lens architecture consists of the following components:
NFT Profile
NFT Profile represents the user “Internet Indentity”. This profile contains the history of all posts, mirrors & comments produced by a user. As per the name a NFT with all of the above data is stored in a users wallet.
Follow NFTs
Follow NFTs are the basis of the social graph.
When users follow a profile they receive a «follow NFT» .
To prevent bots from following an Profile a user may set follower requirements like: MATIC upfront, follower account number, account activity (number of publications) …
Its a nice deterministic way which returns power back to the users.
Publications
Publications (post, comment or mirror) are posted directly to a users Profile NFT which means all content produced is now owned by users.
Mirrors, similar to retweet mechanic, are simply Lens way to allow users to amplify content on a timeline so other users can see it.
Collect feature
Since users now own their Identity & all content produced via that identity that means users can now directly monetize their content.
For example users can take a publication & mint an NFT pointing to the content URI which can be purchased by a follower.
Web 2 vs Web 3
Content creator rewarding
Web2: Content creator on Youtube, Tik-Tok, Instagram etc… are never paid directly by their work but by the advertising revenue of the platform.
This is the reason why most them also uses crowdfunding platforms or make product placement integrated into the media.
Web3: Since all content is stored in a users Profile NFT that means users have a direct way to monetize their content in their social graph.
Fake Account
Web2: Every year Facebook reports to delete 6 BILLION accounts but they are not the only ones concerned by fake accounts posting unwanted content.
Web3: On-chain identity are harder to fake than generating an email account for Identity generation. Users are able to set the parameters required for an audience to gain access to their content.
Surveillance Capitalism
Web2: Social is value extractive. They farm user data, employ algorithms to derive conclusions of user behaviour & sell it to companies without users profiting
Web3: Algorithms will be completely open source & optional for users via a marketplace of Algorithms. Users will be able to choose to sell their data or not, to third party providers so they can extract useful information on user behaviour.
Ecosystem
The protocol is built with modularity in mind, allowing new features to be added while ensuring immutable user-owned content & social relationships. This allows the emergence of a multitude of dApps in the Lensverse, one can think of
- Lenster, a decentralized & permissionless social media app
- Lenstube, a decentralized video-sharing media platform
- Lensta, feed the most recent images posted on Lens …
It is true, Web3 currently displays some limitations like:
Scalability — transactions are slower on Web3 because they are decentralized
UX — interacting with Web3 applications may require additional steps, software & knowledge
But Web3 is inescapable to break free from these companies that provide services in exchange for your personal data (Web2) & Lens protocol could play a key role in creating the ecosystem of social applications from which we can choose.
Thanks for reading Luchamigos🙏
You can follow Luchadores : https://lenster.xyz/u/luchadores.lens and me on Lenster: https://lenster.xyz/u/linka.lens
