From Lens Protocol to SocialFi
Before we dive into the details of Lens Protocol, I would like to give some thoughts I have about Web 3.0 SocialFi.
What is SocialFi?
SocialFi is the abbreviation of “Social” and “DeFi”, which essentially refer to the combination of Social and Finance on the blockchain. In contract to the traditional social networks in web 2.0, SocialFi is decentralised and focus on user data ownership and security. Also it always carry value. With SocialFi, it allows influential figures to gain monetary benefits from their social influence. Fans can purchase tokens from their favourites musicians, writers, artists, or twitter KOL. As the community grows, it increases the value proposition for all the entities involved.
What problems does SocialFi solve?
To answer this question, let’s look at the Web 2.0 social networks that we’re familiar with. Social media giants like Meta, Twitter, Youtube collect and control all the data of social users. Every single twitter, every video that you post on youtube are controlled by them. They can delete the content or block your accounts simply because the opinions that you have is not political correct.
To summary, there are three main problems that SocialFI aims to solve:
Data ownership
Traditional social media platform collect and keep user data in their own databases as legally possible throughout their networks of platforms and from third parties. In contract, social users should own the data and be able to manage the data themselves. SocialFi leverage the blockchain technology and handle back the data ownership to users.
Incentives
Most social media users do not have incentives. Users appears as users whereas the platforms make huge amount of money via advertising. They are making money from your content but do not distribute the revenue to you.
With SocialFi, social influencers can gain monetary benefits from the content they produce. The higher the quality of the content, the higher the monetary returns. The higher the social reputation is, the higher the monetary returns.
Privacy and security
It is not uncommon that social media platform tracks users locations or photos without acknowledgement. What’s more, many times social media platforms are hacked which lead to millions of personal information records are leaked online. Since SocialFi is based on the blockchain technology, it can protect users’ privacy and security by not revealing users’ real identity information.
Why SocialFi is favoured by investment institutions?
SocialFi is favoured by many investment institutions. “Decentralized Social” DeSo (also known as BitClout) founded by Nader Al-Naji received 200 million investments in 2021 from many high-profile venture firms, such as a16z, Coinbase Ventures and others.
Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance, led the $1.5M seed round for Bulletin Board System (BBS) Network, a decentralised Web3.0 public network of user-run online message boards.
Mem Protocol have closed a $3.1M seed round led by a16z. Mem is building a decentralised social media protocol with data sovereignty at the center.
Monaco Planet, a SocialFi platform has successfully completed its seed round of funding, raising $3 million from Three Arrows Capital and IMO Ventures.
At the time of writing, Binance announced 28th project on Binance Launchpad, STEPN. STEPN is a web 3 lifestyle app with SocialFi and GameFi elements. Players can make handsome earnings by walking, jogging or running outdoors. Binance is always leading the industry by
According to Digital 2022, there are 4.62 billion active social media users, which is stunning.
At an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes per day, social media accounts for the largest single share of our connected media time, at 35 percent of the total. The time we spend using social media has grown again over the past year too, up by 2 minutes per day (+1.4 percent).
Among social media platforms, Facebook is still the world’s most-used social media platform, with 2.91 billion users as of October 2021, followed by Youtube and Whatsapp.
According to Statista.com, In 2021, Facebook (now renamed to Meta) revenue amounted to roughly 117 billion US dollars, up from around 86 billion U.S. dollars in the previous fiscal year. The social network’s main source of income is digital advertising.
That explains why SocialFi is favoured by investment institutions.
What is Lens Protocol and Why it is important?
Lens Protocol is a social graph designed for web3 developers to make building a social network easy for them. The team that behind Lens is the well-known Aave Protocol. Unlike social media platforms of the past, Lens Protocol and its content are powered by dynamic NFTs, giving the power and control over content directly to the users, allowing for native content monetization. That means, social users can now
- Own your content
- Own your social network
- Own your data
- Own the way you monetize
More importantly, unlink other SocialFi products, Lens Protocol is focusing on building the infrastructure for all new web3 social apps to build on top of. The potential of what dapps can be built is unlimited, ranging from social app, NFT fair distribution to DAO.
With this feature, it enable portability among any applications that built on top of Lens. Creators can move their content, followers and livelihood from one social application to another better social application, turning the zero-sum game into a collaborative ecosystem.
What can you build with Lens
Social Verification
Web2 social media verification is controlled by platforms, for example, twitter controls which accounts can get Verified label. Instead, social verification in web3 should be verified by the communities. Lens broadens the concept of ‘verification’ by introducing a more extensible tagging system that allow any meaningful label to be tagged and verified, such as posts, a collection of articles, a company’s online profile or even an idea.
Drop Mechanics
We have seen a lot that bots have taken most of the free minted NFT from your favourite artists or digital creators, keeping the real supporters out of the door. It has been challenging to find a fair approach to distribute digital goods to the community. With Lens, creators can set rules that best fit their individual community, making drops more social and fair. A easily set customisable distribution rules is a real game changer for social applications.
Group Identity
Social media of the past is built for individuals, not for organisations. Current social platform are not designed for ad-hoc communities that may have diverse ways of organising themselves. For example, facebook groups have a fixed user experience for all groups. What if they have desire for a different user experience that suits their styles? Imagine a DAO-owned community chat as a replacement for discord?
Data Analytics
With Lens, users are able to access all the data thus deriving meaningful insights from their own social graph data. It would be cool to have a dashboard that we can learn more about our own social habits, personalities and communication styles from social graph data.
Social Graph Visualisation
Web2 social media platform make revenue by exploiting your connections. You can recommended random people, random products based on their algorithms. It is very annoying for people who really care about their social connection. Lens take care of this by carefully building your social graph based on your interests. Users have 100% control of who they follow, what content to share. A carefully built social graph can help people visual their social connections. Imagine a dashboard that you can see how your connection have flourished or diminished over time.
DAO Toolshed
Current DAO tools available often do not scale and have no way to capture the rich identity of their community. Lens has built-in DAO tools that combine various voting systems allowing some communities to run in a representative manner with boards or committees empowered to make certain decisions.
Owning your own social graph is a huge opportunity to reshape your personal life. You can use it to customise your e-commerce experience based on what your friends are purchasing. For gamers, there are nothing more exciting than finding other players with similar play styles. This can also be achieved with the social graph . Similarly, people can find friends that love same sport, wear same shoe or read same book.
Current social media platforms we use has their own social graph, and they are not crossed with each other, just like seperate universe. Imagine an open social graph that combine social graphs of Spotify, Netflix, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all together. Really look forward to seeing what a new way of live experience that would be.
