Aave Companies, the shop behind the protocol built for cryptocurrency lending and borrowing, wants to fix social media.
News promotion: The Lens Protocol, released today on Polygon’s blockchain, invited developers to build social media apps, marketplaces, and recommendation engines that could provide a new decentralized alternative to social media giants.
- Friendly reminders: Polygon is a layer 2 blockchain that processes transactions faster than Ethereum and has lower gas charges, which in theory allows for better on-chain app development.
Important reason: The potential of Web3 is moving from systems where web hosts and platforms have authority over user-generated content to systems where users can exert more power by being able to cryptographically identify user IDs and content.
conspiracy: Elon Musk’s public bid to buy Twitter is revitalizing crypto industry leaders to target social media as well as finance.
- FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried recently said he wanted to talk to Musk about Twitter, lamenting Big Tech’s grip on social media and calling the status quo a “broken model.”
- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has spoken out about Ethereum use cases that go beyond DeFi, such as social media.
detail: Lens has been a hot topic for some time, starting with a 2021 letter advocating for social media users to own content. Users who “sign” the Lens Open Letter using their wallet address can now create and request a LensNFT profile.
- At launch, there were over 50 apps with Lens and about 30,000 “signers” of letters, according to Aave.
- Not yet accurately decentralized. The Lens Protocol is monitored by a multi-signature wallet, but we plan to move to a community-owned model through what is called “progressive decentralization.”
Flashback: Aave founder Stani Kulechov hints at blockchain-led solutions to social media illnesses and what he sees, such as “existing platforms are terrible” and “poor quality discourse.”
What they are saying: “2021 is ripe for decentralized social media,” said Aave founder Stani Kulechov. twitter..
- It’s worth noting that this is not the first crypto social network. Examples are Hive and Cent. These are small, but still working. There were also large bids that had little impact, such as the original version of Block.One’s Voice and the infamous BitClout.
Our thought bubble: It’s easy to say. There have been many attempts to improve social networks, but the struggle to scale is a reality.
