Lens Protocol, a crypto-powered social media platform built by the Aave Companies, is rolling out several key features in its latest update.
Notably, V2 will let Lens users finally block one another on-chain, much like on Web2 equivalent Twitter. Blocked accounts won't be able to comment, follow, quote-comment, or execute unique, crypto-specific features such as mirror and collect.
Collect lets users gather and store content on Lens as an NFT, while mirror is the platform's equivalent of a retweet. If a mirrored piece of content earns money, then users who mirror the content will also get a slice.
Lens Protocol Raises $15 Million to Expand Decentralized Social Media
Decentralized finance leader Aave has raised $15 million to fund Lens, its NFT-powered protocol for decentralized social media platforms, the company announced Thursday. Lens is a protocol built atop Polygon, the Ethereum scaling solution. Social media platforms built on Lens can use smart contracts and NFTs to tokenize social data—making a user’s posts, preferences, and network both proprietary to that user, and transferable to any other social network built on Lens. “Users can have ownership...
Monetization is a key pillar of the Lens' V2 upgrade.
"Lens Protocol V2 takes decentralized social media and monetization opportunities to a new level," said Lens Protocol and Aave founder Stani Kulechov in a prepared statement. "Providing maximum flexibility for builders, V2 enables new types of social engagements and monetization relationships, where all stakeholders can share in the value of social networks—both individually and collectively as an ecosystem."
The platform is also diving deeper into more crypto-native actions, offering builders different ways to integrate activities like joining a DAO or donating to public goods directly into different kinds of content.
Decentralized Twitter Alternatives Bluesky and Nostr Are Growing, With Some Growing Pains
Bluesky and Nostr—two separate Twitter-like social platforms, both decentralized, and both backed by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey—are growing rapidly as Elon Musk continues to make controversial changes to Twitter itself. Bluesky released its long-awaited app for Android smartphones on Friday, almost two months after its iOS client went live on the Apple App Store. (The web client is still in pre-beta.) Bluesky access is still invite-only, but the growth of its user base is accelerating from ab...
Profiles themselves, which were ERC-721 NFTs, have been upgraded to the ERC-6551 standard; this gives them qualities closer to a crypto wallet, allowing users to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies, rather than standard digital collectibles.
Lens' latest rollout comes amid growing interest in alternatives to Twitter.
Earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta officially launched its micro-blogging platform called Threads. Bluesky, itself a product of several former Twitter engineers, is also gaining steam, attracting several household names to the platform.
