As Elon Musk spends billions of dollars to buy Twitter, Aave is busy creating a better version for Web 3.0. Lens Protocol, the decentralised social media platform, is officially launched and available on the Polygon network (MATIC).
Lens Protocol officially launched
Just a few months after the announcement of this ambitious project, Lens Protocol is officially launched on the Polygon blockchain (MATIC). In a few words, the project describes itself as “a permissionless, composable and decentralised social graph that facilitates the construction of Web 3.0 social platforms”.
1/ It’s a big day, bloomers! Lens Protocol is live on @0xPolygon mainnet and it’s so exciting to ring in Web3 Social Summer in style Here’s a few key takeaways from today’s launch. Ready? Follow us into the garden…
– LensProtocol.lens (@LensProtocol) May 18, 2022
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Lens Protocol is a truly decentralised ecosystem, a foundation for Web 3.0 applications related to social media. The protocol is open-source and allows any developer to build a decentralised application, such as a social network or a forum.
As yoginth.eth, the founder of Lenster, explains, building a social network on the Lens platform opens up a whole new range of possibilities than we have ever seen before:
“Lens is fundamentally changing the landscape of social media platforms and user experiences as we know them today. “
Some 50 applications have already started to flourish on Lens Protocol. These include Lenster, of course, but also Lens Booster, SpamDAO, GoldenCircle, PeerStream, Swapify, Social Link and many others. As a member of the community, it is already possible to get your login and start browsing the platform.
Lens in search of decentralisation
Long touted as a competitor to Twitter or Facebook, Lens Protocol focuses on decentralisation and ownership of users’ personal data. Instead of being connected via an email address and a pseudonym, Lens relies on an Ethereum address and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
In this way, users regain control over the content they publish and can control – instead of a centralised entity like Facebook, Google or Twitter – their personal data. In addition, the idea is to unlock new sources of content monetisation via NFTs for artists’ accounts, influencers, etc.
Social networks are often criticised for their unilateral decisions to delete users’ accounts, without giving a clear explanation. The CEO of Aave himself, Stani Kulechov, was recently the subject of such a suspension. In April, during the announcement of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, his account was suspended for a joke about “joining Twitter as interim CEO”.
However, one detail has yet to be clarified. A decentralised social network is undeniably data-intensive and has to handle a very high throughput of transactions. This is a scalability problem that blockchains generally have difficulty solving.
Although Lens is being developed on Polygon, this network has already experienced periods of heavy congestion, especially during the release of highly anticipated games. For now, Kulechov has only stated that the protocol will explore other second-layer solutions, both on Polygon and Ethereum.
