At the EthCC conference in Paris, Aave and Lens Protocol founder Stani Kulechov announced the launch of Lens Protocol V2, underlining how open standards and portability can empower users in social media.
The need for decentralized social media
Kulechov started by discussing how he believes that centralized social platforms “block users” and their data, limiting choice and innovation. However, decentralized protocols such as Lens aim to create an open social graph where identity and content are carried between applications.
Kulechov pointed to examples such as Threads, which gains 100 million users in 5 days by allowing Instagram imports, highlighting the power of portability that is missing from traditional social media walled gardens.
While centralized platforms like Twitter control algorithms and data, users create value but don’t benefit from it. Decentralized social protocols attempt to solve this problem by creating NFT-based profiles and content so that users fully control their digital identities
.
Lens Protocol V1 has simplified “building social applications by providing an easy to use social layer for web3 with just 5 lines of code.” According to on-chain data, Lens currently has 115,159 accounts that hold profiles with more than 260,000
transactions to date.
Objective Protocol V2
Lens Protocol V2 continues this vision through updates such as “open actions” that link any on-chain behavior to social content, such as minting or NFT trading. This aims to integrate Web3 activities into the social experience seamlessly. Other features such as ‘collective value sharing’ allow the monetization and portability of content between Lens apps
.
The new open profile architecture separates the handles from the profiles, both represented by NFT, to increase ownership and flexibility. Users can now have multiple handles per profile or attach an ENS name. Kulechov highlighted how profiles, being NFTs, allow other NFTs to have profiles and participate
socially.
Kulechov expanded the new profile manager by stating:
“An interesting idea for the profile manager is that you can store your profile securely in a cold room and delegate the actual social actions to a portfolio that uses the day-to-day basis.
But also what it allows you to do is that you can delegate social actions to an application where you can create an experience where you don’t have to sign any transactions in the future.”
Lens Protocol V2 demonstrates a social protocol focused on open standards rather than closed platforms to give users more control and ownership. Additional security features aim to protect profiles and prevent problems such as phishing
.
Although innovative, it’s unclear whether the protocol could attract the creators and users needed for a thriving social economy. But Lens’s open philosophy allows anyone to build and extend the protocol to realize its possibilities. Kulechov concluded his EthCC speech by inviting more developers to take advantage of Lens as a layer of identity and content
for new social experiences.
Launch of GHO Mainnet Ethereum
The news of Lens V2 comes just 2 days after the launch of GHO (Governance Hoard)’s Aave on the Ethereum mainnet, which marked a significant milestone for the Aave protocol and its community.
As the announcement post describes, GHO is a supercollateralized stablecoin governed by the Aave DAO. Users can now coin GHO against assets provided as collateral on Aave V3, boosting them with a decentralized payment level
.
The post highlights GHO’s unique characteristics, including its multi-collateral support, the discounted minting for the stakers of the AAVE token, and the direction of interest payments to the Aave DAO treasury.
The launch followed a rigorous auditing process that showed Aave’s focus on risk mitigation and security. Overall, GHO represents an exciting new capability for the already robust Aave ecosystem. Its community-driven governance and embedded return opportunities place it well in the midst of the expanding landscape of decentralized stablecoins
.
