At the EthCC conference in Paris, Aave, and Lens Protocol founder Stani Kulechov announced the launch of Lens Protocol V2, emphasizing how open standards and portability can empower users in social media.
The need for decentralized social media
Kulechov began by discussing how he believes centralized social platforms “lock in users” and their data, limiting choice and innovation. However, decentralized protocols like Lens aim to create an open social graph where identity and content are portable across applications.
Kulechov pointed to examples like Threads gaining 100 million users in 5 days by allowing Instagram imports, highlighting the power of portability missing from traditional social media walled gardens.
While centralized platforms like Twitter control algorithms and data, users create value but don’t benefit. Decentralized social protocols attempt to fix this by making profiles and content NFT-based so users fully control their digital identities.
Lens Protocol V1 simplified “building social applications by providing an easy-to-use social layer for web3 with just 5 lines of code.” According to on-chain data, Lens currently has 115,159 accounts holding profiles with over 260,000 transactions to date.
Lens Protocol V2
Lens Protocol V2 continues this vision through upgrades like “open actions” that connect any on-chain behavior to social content, such as NFT minting or trading. This aims to integrate Web3 activities into the social experience seamlessly. Other features like “collective value sharing” enable the monetization and portability of content across Lens apps.
The new open profile architecture separates handles from profiles, with both represented by NFTs, to increase ownership and flexibility. Users can now have multiple handles per profile or attach an ENS name. Kulechov highlighted how profiles being NFTs allows other NFTs to have profiles and participate socially.
Kulechov expanded on the new profile manager stating,
“One interesting idea towards the profile manager is that you can store your profile safely in a cold storage and delegate the actual social actions into a wallet that use day-to-day basis.
But also what it allows you to do is that you can delegate the social actions into an application where you can create an experience where you don’t have to sign any transaction in the future.”
Lens Protocol V2 demonstrates a social protocol focusing on open standards rather than closed platforms to give users more control and ownership. Additional safety features aim to protect profiles and prevent issues like phishing.
While innovative, it’s unclear whether the protocol can attract the creators and users needed for a thriving social economy. But Lens’ open philosophy allows anyone to build on and extend the protocol to realize its possibilities. Kulechov ended his EthCC talk by inviting more developers to leverage Lens as an identity and content layer for novel social experiences.
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