Lens Protocol: Bringing Social Media to the Blockchain

Users connecting with the dapp up 80% in the past week

Lens Protocol is building infrastructure that could change the face of social media in the age of Web3. The platform will give users and creators ownership over their online presence. With that in mind, Lens Protocol’s latest move is the first step in giving people control over their digital identity. And it led to a huge jump in their on-chain metrics.

Highlights

• Unique active wallets connecting to Lens Protocol are up 79.69% over the last seven days. In the same period, transactions are up 81.68%
• Lens Protocol is a protocol, not an application. Lens is building the platforms and infrastructure on which creators can put their content. This means that users can move across various applications with the same online identity. The idea is to promote trust and the importance of a good reputation.  
• Lens Protocol handles have been trending on OpenSea as users try to secure the best names for their Profiles.

What is Lens Protocol?

Lens Protocol is a decentralized social graph that provides the infrastructure for Web3 social media platforms. One of their goals is to give users a single, blockchain-secured identity across all digital platforms. Instead of logging into separate “antiquated, centralized systems”, Lens aims to leverage NFT technology so users can move seamlessly across the social metaverse.

Lens Protocol’s objectives go beyond ownership and identity. Their mission is also to help alleviate some of the issues we see on today’s social media platforms. Anger, outrage and confrontation are all favored by the algorithms of Twitter, Meta and TikTok. Content that plays on these emotions gets clicks, attention and money.

Over the past five years or so, people have realized that online antagonism has spilled over into the real world. Content prioritizing hostility over cooperation has contributed to a more fractured and entrenched public discourse. Lens Protocol wants to help diffuse this situation by ‘empowering creators to own the links between themselves and their community’.

How will Lens Protocol work?

Lens Protocol will give users access to what’s known as the social graph. This is the network of connections that social media companies use when they suggest a video, a piece of news or an advertisement to their users. Using algorithms, the likes of LinkedIn and Meta will put content in front of users depending on who else is in their social graph.

Lens wants to open up these tools to let creators plug into them directly, instead of hiding that data and monetizing it. Then, creators can accurately direct their content towards receptive audiences. The social graph will also be open to users, so they can choose what they want to see.

This, Lens predicts, will stop centralized social media companies from fighting for users’ attention by promoting angry, hostile posts.

A short story to show how this works

• A creator who publishes a Web3 blog sets up a Profile and publishes their articles. This content is attached to a single Profile that can move and work across various applications.
• A user’s social graph shows they have an interest in Web3.
• Now, the creator can analyze the social graph and direct their content towards the user.
• The user can then follow the creator’s Profile and engage with their content. They can also see what other connections that Profile has in their social graph and start engaging with that community.
• If the creator produces good content, they can start to monetize it and build up their reputation.

Furthermore, users will have full ownership of their online identities and creators will have full ownership over their content. With no centralized social media platform having full control over their user base, they cannot deplatform, cancel or silence people.

This also means creators’ content is secure because it’s no longer at the mercy of an unknown algorithm. Their creations cannot be taken from them and they can’t be shadow-banned based on the whim of a moderator.

What does DappRadar show about Lens Protocol?

Over the past seven days, DappRadar’s data shows Lens Protocol and the platform’s on-chain metrics have been an interesting journey. Unique active wallets, a measure of how many individual Web3 wallets have connected with the dapp, are up 80% to 13,610.

The transaction count, which shows how many transactions have gone through the dapp’s smart contracts, is up 82% and sits at 579,950 for the past week. Both of these upticks coincide with a big development on Lens Protocol.

Lens Protocol recently started letting people claim their Lens handle. This will be connected to a user’s online identity they use across all applications powered by Lens, otherwise known as a Profile.

The reason that unique active wallets and transactions have gone through the roof is due to people connecting to the protocol and claiming their handle. Although it’s not the same thing, it’s similar to people claiming ENS Domains giving people an identity on the Ethereum blockchain.

Lens Protocol trending on OpenSea

This week, Lens Protocol has also been trending on secondary marketplace OpenSea. There are tens of thousands of handles out there already and people are trading them for varying prices on the open market.

Users can trade their handles on the open market because Lens is a Web3 company. The principles of secure ownership are central to what the company does. It will be interesting to see in future if users are able to build up a strong online reputation and then trade that Profile for profit. If they can, what we’ll see is people with money being able to buy status, instead of earning it.