Crypto Quill

Lens Protocol, the social layer of the DeFi lending platform Aave, has announced that it has become permissionless and open for everyone to join and build. This means that anyone can create an on-chain NFT profile to access the protocol and its features, such as data ownership, social graph, and content creation. Developers can also leverage the existing social graph and profiles to build new applications and use cases on top of Lens.

Lens Protocol: A Decentralized Social Platform

Lens Protocol was launched in February 2022 as a beta version, aiming to enable human connection through novel ownership mechanisms in regard to created content, social graph, and data. Unlike traditional Web2 social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, Lens Protocol allows users to maintain full control and ownership over their online identities, relationships, and content. Users can interact with decentralized applications (dApps) within the Lens ecosystem through NFTs that function as user profiles.

Lens Protocol has supported over 400 applications developed by the community, with an estimated 100 contributors. Some of the applications are entirely open source, allowing anyone to fork, modify, and improve them. Lens Protocol has also attracted a large and diverse user base, with over 100,000 users, 11 million followers, 2.2 million comments, and 37 million social transactions, including 5 million posts and 4.5 million mirrors.

Lens Protocol: A Permissionless and Open Protocol

Since its inception, Lens Protocol has been operating in beta mode, while addressing concerns related to upgradeability and safety. However, the community feedback has indicated a strong demand for permissionless access to the protocol, as well as more innovation and experimentation. Therefore, Lens Protocol has decided to transition to a permissionless and open phase, following a community-driven Lens Improvement Protocol (LIP) process.

Now, anyone can mint a Lens profile to access the protocol by paying a minimal fee of either 10 MATIC tokens or approximately $10.30 through a credit card. Developers can also access the protocol and build whatever experiences they want and create new use cases and business models. They can also customize their content viewership and monetize it through tokens. Building new apps on Lens is even simpler, as its ready-made social graph allows them to leverage existing relationships and profiles instead of starting from scratch.

Lens Protocol: A Future-Ready Protocol

The transition of Lens Protocol to a permissionless and open protocol marks a significant milestone in its development and vision. It also eliminates all development-related barriers and stimulates collective innovation to a greater extent. Lens Protocol aims to become a leading decentralized social platform that empowers users and developers with new forms of ownership, expression, and connection.

Lens Protocol will continue to collaborate with the deeper Lens community and the primary Lens team to advance the protocol and its features. The first phase will consist of network upgrades intended for the onboarding of new users. The subsequent stage will involve the creation of an improved iteration of the social network, which will offer users increased authority regarding their proprietorship.

Lens Protocol is also part of the broader movement of decentralization of social networks (DeSo), which challenges the dominance and centralization of Web2 social media platforms. Lens Protocol faces competition from other DeSo platforms, such as Farcaster, which had already gone permissionless in October 2023, and Bluesky, which is backed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and has already opened up access to over 800,000 new users in a single day.