Lens Protocol: A Web3 social media endorsed by the Aave team

Author: 0xivecott, TokenInsight

TL;DR:

What is it? A decentralized social media on Polygon.

Is there a token? Not yet, but there is a Fair Launch channel on Discord where everyone is currently saying gm.

Can it be used? No, there is currently no product.

Who endorses it? Stani Kulechov, the founder of Aave, has changed his Twitter avatar to this.

What is Lens Protocol?

Lens is a decentralized social media underlying protocol built on Polygon, characterized by open-source and composability (they call it Social Graph), and serves as the infrastructure for Web3 social media. Users can freely develop and own the rights to their created content by holding the corresponding NFTs. The project is designed and developed by some members of the WE3 community (a community focused on Web3 design products: https://we3.co/), and was publicly launched by Aave founder Stani on February 8, 2022, with the current protocol already live on the Mumbai testnet of Polygon.

Key Features:

Content and ownership tokenization: Users' homepages will be minted as Profile NFTs that follow the user. The content created can also be additionally issued as NFTs for sale to fans.

Modular components with composable features: Developers are allowed to build their own social applications on Lens using modular components. Developers are encouraged to create new components that enhance product experience. Other external applications can also connect to Lens and share the advantages of the Lens ecosystem.

More like a back-end than a front-end product. The Lens protocol is more like a back-end product provided to various social media developers rather than a fully developed front-end product ready for direct use.

What can Lens Protocol do?

https://lens.dev/

The classification of Lens users is simple. Content creators can publish, repost, and comment on content; non-content publishers can only follow their favorite creators and collect (essentially purchase NFTs of) their favorite creators' NFTs. A brief introduction to Lens's features is provided below.

Creating a Profile Homepage

To become a content creator, users need to link their wallets to the protocol and create a Lens Profile homepage, becoming a part of this decentralized social network. Accordingly, they will receive their Profile NFT, and the address holding this NFT truly owns the rights to this homepage.

Unlike traditional social media, anyone can publish content. In Lens Protocol, only users who hold a homepage Profile NFT can create, publish, comment, and repost content, while other users without a Profile NFT can only follow their favorite homepages and collect the content published by creators (each piece of content is in NFT form, which will be detailed later) and cannot publish, comment, or repost.

Operations exclusive to Profile NFT holders:

• Publish, comment, share (Mirror function);
• Set follow conditions and whitelists, such as paid subscriptions;
• Use the Follow module to set proxy posting addresses (can designate other addresses to help post).

Operations that any address (including those without Profile NFTs) can perform: Follow a homepage Profile and receive the corresponding "Follow NFT"; collect content published by creators and receive the corresponding "Collect NFT" (collection rules are determined by the account publishing the NFT, e.g., purchasing at a certain price);

Each personal homepage created by users has a corresponding Profile NFT, and a user can own multiple homepage NFTs, which represent ownership of the content of that homepage. Unlike other DIDs, Profile NFTs are dynamic NFTs that update in real-time, recording all post information published by that homepage, including posts, comments, and reposts (also known as Mirror, which essentially indexes content from other homepages).

Note: 1. Profile NFTs will be linked to Follow NFTs to record how many users and which users follow that homepage. 2. Profile eligibility is currently only open to addresses approved by governance to avoid spam users occupying names.

Privileges of Profile NFT Holders: Publishing Content, Commenting, and Mirroring

Very simple, basically three functions: publish content (Post), comment (Comment), and repost (Mirror). All content will be published in the Profile NFT to ensure content ownership.

Profile NFTs are dynamic NFTs, just like an account, continuously recording and updating the latest content published by the user while preserving the historical records of previously published posts. The forms of published content are also very diverse (given the use of Content URI), allowing publishers to link to text, images, or videos stored on IPFS, Arweave, or centralized storage like AWS.

Additionally, there are two modules available for publishing content: Collect Module and Reference Module. The Collect Module allows content creators to mint their content as NFTs for purchase or collection by other followers; the Reference Module allows content creators to set permissions for commenting and reposting.

The commenting and Mirroring functions are similar to the publishing function; they are first subject to the original author's permission restrictions. When permission to comment and repost is granted, they have their own permission settings (similar to traditional social media, where you can repost a repost, comment on a repost, or repost a comment, etc., set in the Reference Module).

Note: The above functions are only available to addresses that have minted Profile NFTs.

Any Address Can: Follow and Collect

In the Lens protocol, any address can follow various Profiles. Following a Profile will yield the corresponding Follow NFT. A Profile owner can set whether followers can receive their issued Follow NFTs, such as adding some paid terms: how much MATIC each follower needs to pay to follow me and receive my Follow NFT, etc.

This is similar to OnlyFans or other paid membership social platforms. Follow NFTs also conveniently record the order and number of fans, while also determining governance, such as which top fans can participate in voting, and how active fans can participate in voting, etc.

Any address can also collect (Collect) content published by their favorite homepages, and upon collection, they will receive the corresponding Collect NFT. The Collect function allows creators to better sell their content to the market. For each published piece of content, creators can choose to mint the corresponding NFT. Additionally, by using the Collect module, creators can even set: opening NFT sales for a specific period, etc. This is also similar to the traditional paid reading experience.

What Advantages Does Lens Have Over Competitors?

Currently, the largest social media platforms by user count remain centralized, such as Twitter, Meta (formerly Facebook), Discord, YouTube, and others. These centralized platforms control all the content published by creators, their freedom, and revenue.

The advantages of decentralization are evident: by tokenizing content as NFTs, Web3 users do not need to create platform accounts but can directly communicate and create content with other users using their addresses, ensuring the authenticity of content and identity, and most importantly, returning ownership to the content creators themselves. Some typical examples of current decentralized social media include:

BitClout (DeSo): A decentralized Twitter that has also created its own public chain, structured similarly to the Bitcoin network. Functionally, it is almost identical to Twitter, with addresses linking to their own homepages, posting, following, reposting, etc., using its own network token as an incentive mechanism;

Monaco Planet: Also similar to Twitter, the only feature that is more Web3 is linking your wallet to read and display NFT data. Other features are not distinctive. (Of course, users can also earn MONA rewards by publishing content.)

Only1: Deployed on the Solana network, allowing creators to publish their content in the form of NFTs and directly share and interact with their fans to earn revenue. Both creators and fan users can earn rewards through social activities on Only1. The project's native token $LIKE can meet users' needs for paying for NFTs and can also become a source of staking rewards.

Most of the above products are developed based on Web2 social media, with a relatively simple framework and low user engagement and composability. In contrast, Lens has the following advantages.

Open-source and composability allow for high customization of Lens.

The core advantage of the Lens protocol lies in its highly customizable and composable decentralized social media. All the modules mentioned above (Follow, Reference, and Collect) have already been developed by the Lens team, and they have also written guild tutorials for users to develop new modules. More interesting modular products will be available in the future to enhance user experience.

The data and functions of Lens can interface with any smart contract, meaning other applications can directly plug in, interact, or directly improve and adapt on Lens, facilitating a richer Lens ecosystem and enhancing user applicability.

By using Lens's modules, users can develop the products they want to create. For all projects built on Lens, including but not limited to: Social apps, Content moderation tools, Analytics platforms, Verification systems, DAO tooling, etc. Lens refers to such ecosystem building as: "Grow the Garden."

Additionally, Lens Protocol currently supports funding early projects that want to build on it; simply fill out the form to apply, with funding amounts up to $250,000. Lens amusingly refers to the funding as: "Fertilizer."

No Need to Build a Basic User Base

Given the aforementioned open-source nature and composability, any project that integrates Plugin Lens can utilize Lens's core functions and enjoy Fertilizer benefits, allowing Lens to directly absorb user bases from other products. Furthermore, not all users need to create accounts (Profile NFTs) to use Lens; any user with an address can directly participate in purchases and follows on Lens, so theoretically, these addresses are already part of the user base.

Reference

The project currently has no tokens. Early bird users (those who signed in the whitelist Open Letter before January 23: https://lens.dev/letter, including 3LAU, Ryan Selikis from Messari, Ryan Sean Adams, and Stani from Aave) can participate in the Early bloomer role allocation, with 7,810 addresses currently passing the whitelist.

TI Inclusion: Lens Protocol

Mirror: https://mirror.xyz/lensprotocol.eth

Open Letter: https://lens.dev/letter

Design Team We3: https://we3.co/

Doc Documentation: https://docs.lens.dev/docs

Inspired by: https://verses.xyz/

Polygon Testnet: ++https://docs.lens.dev/docs/testnet-addresses++