Lens Protocol: Social Media Disruption Imminent?

When Elon Musk took over Twitter there was a huge debate whether it was a great move or a big disaster. There were vocal supporters on either side with one group claiming Elon to be the flagbearer for freeing up the media which was earlier riddled with corruption and government control on the other hand there were people shouting that Elon was soon going to destroy the platform.

I am not going to debate on the competency of Elon but I do agree that social media platforms should be unbiased and decentralized as much as possible. This is why I was really excited when I got to know about Lens Protocol and I wanted to share how Lens Protocol has huge potential of changing the social media environment completely, hopefully for the better.

What Exactly is Lens Protocol?

In a nutshell Lens is a social media ecosystem built upon blockchain technology with the aim of providing a completely decentralized platform for people to engage socially. Basically an improved Facebook but no Zuckerberg controlling it.

Lens offers an environment where creators own their content and have options to monetize it. The relationships between different users is captured through the Graph database which is part of Lens architecture. Lens is running on Polygon blockchain and is compatible with popular wallets like Metamask, Gnosis and Argent. Creators can be assured that the content they post is secure and is not dependent on arbitrary policies implemented by any centralized authority which is a common feature in platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

How Does Lens Protocol Work?

To get started with Lens you will need to get a “.lens” profile. Once you have the profile configured you will be able to post content and interact with other users. Lens runs on Polygon blockchain which facilitates true ownership of your content. Whatever content you publish via Lens is registered on the blockchain so it can not be removed by any centralized authority.

If we look at the architecture of Lens, it is running on top of Polygon blockchain and it can support multiple apps on top of it with different form of user interfaces. For example Lenster, Memester and Orb are some popular applications running on Lens and you can connect to them using the unique “.lens” profile you have.

Lens offers a “mirror” feature which is just like retweet of Twitter. There is a “collect” functionality which enables you to mint a content like a NFT on the blockchain. Collect function also enables monetization of the content you are sharing with your followers.

Lens is currently running on a closed beta mode with more than 70K active users on their discord server. Earlier this year they had released a limited set of lens handles to whitelisted users. Currently minting of handles is closed but if you missed out you can buy it from the secondary market on Opensea. There were about 116K handles minted during the first phase and Lens team has announced that soon they will be making the handle minting public again.

Despite being so early in their roadmap they have already developed a wide range of apps on their ecosystem covering a diverse set of activities:

• Social Media- Lenster is the most popular app but there are several others worth checking out like Lenstube, Orb, Phaver, Pinsta and Memester

• Content Curation- LensPort and Lensta are the curation portal available

• Analytics- To get a view of the key statistics you can access Bello and Lens Analytics

• Music- Amnisiac and ClubSpace are decentralized music apps

On top of these there are several developer support platforms and other apps being tested which will be launched soon.

Lens Protocol is definitely a promising project to keep on your watchlist as this has the potential to really explode during the coming months.

You can access their site for more info at- lens.xyz

Cheers,

Sam