Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Aave will develop a decentralized social network. It will be called the Lens Protocol, it will run on Polygon, an Ethereum sidechain, and it will be open source. It will allow interactions and even trade between users, it will also be possible to develop more tools based on it.
The announcement was made known by the company through a publication on Twitter in the Lens account. In the text, it is described that this new social network will work without permissions and will be composable. In other words, it will have interactive elements so that the user can create content with it.
For the moment, Lens is available in the testnet (testnet) by Polygon. Soon, they detail in the Twitter thread, the Alpha version will be released.
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Being open source, this new platform will also lead developers to build other apps on top of Lens. As an example of this, social applications, analytics platforms, verification systems and resources for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) are listed.
On the other hand, Lens aims to be a social graph that works as a basis for building a web3 platform. A social graph or social graph It is a type of interactive map that reflects the interactions and relationships between the users or members that compose it. This is, for example, the basic technology on which platforms like Facebook are based.
Why is it called Lens? In honor of the Lens Culinarias plant, as detailed in the official Web site. This plant interacts with soil bacteria and generates hydrogen that benefits those next to it. By using the Polygon network, the project ensures that it maintains a low carbon footprint and is symbiotic with its surroundings. In a sense, this analogy with the plant kingdom is presented as a figure of what the protocol offers users: creation, growth and beneficial interaction with the community.
In this new protocol, it will be possible to access classic functions of social networks, such as creating a profile, commenting and sharing publications, among others. However, a highlight of Lens is that will integrate non-fungible tokens (NFT) so that each user is the real owner of their content.
Thus, a profile can be stored as NFTs in a self-custody wallet, or even DAOs can hold some through a multisignature wallet.
In addition, the platform will allow receiving NFTs by following other users and interacting with them. This accumulation of tokens allows discriminating against the most “loyal” users to, for example, include only these in a vote. These NFTs can also be traded on an open market.
The content that each user creates, such as images, videos, music or pieces of written literature, can all be shared in Lens, indicates its developer. All this material can be marketed to build collections for other users. The creator of the content determines both the price and the number of units available in each edition and the time limit to acquire them.
Other news announced by Aave
Beyond Lens, the DeFi Aave protocol —one of the 23 most popular in the world, according to Dapps Radar—also announced other news of interest to its users.
One of them is a scholarship program whose purpose is to “accelerate the growth of the ecosystem”. Until now, this initiative has Polygon as a collaborator, although Aave hopes to add others.
Likewise, the firm invited all developers who want to join its Discord channel to consult the available documentation, share ideas, feedback and “make friends” in the meantime.
All these proposals are added to another announced by Aave in 2021. Regarding this project, CriptoNoticias reported in July on the launch of a centralized DeFi platform for institutional clients.