by Mori
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On February 8, the Aave team launched Lens Protocol（lens.dev）which is expected to be a composable decentralized social graph for users to create social media profiles and build new social media applications from.
In the Web2 network, everything about a user's profile, friends and posts is stored in a centralized database, owned by the network operator, and needs to be read from the database, making the data vulnerable and unportable for the user when the database is attacked.
Lens Protocol is changing this with an open social graph. Enabling users to own their own data and bring it to any app built on Lens. Designed to allow creators to own their own connections to the community, resulting in a fully composable, user-owned social graph. As the new Web3 social platform, license-free, composable, and decentralized are its key features.
From the naming of Lens, it seems to be empowering the whole ecosystem.
Lens Protocol has the usual social media features we are familiar with, such as the ability to edit profiles, as well as post, comment, and retweet posts. Unlike other social media, these interactions in Lens Protocol are powered by NFT, so users have full ownership and control of all the content in their account.
Profile NFT is the main language of the Lens Protocol, and the interaction data resulting from user behavior is generally represented by NFT. When a user follows someone, for example, they receive a Follow NFT, which can be coded by the creator and the community to add value, so that each of these NFTs has a unique Token ID, which can be held for fan governance, such as voting proxies, to allow the creation of social DAOs using the Lens protocol. The NFTs can be used for fan governance such as voting proxies to allow the creation of social DAOs using the Lens protocol. In addition, the NFT can also be used to trade on the open market.
Lens' main function is to publish posts. Users could share text, images, music, videos or other artwork by post. It is saved on IPFS, with additional features such as comments and mirror. Posts, comments, and mirrors are collectively referred as Publications, in Lens. Publications are published directly to the user's ProfileNFTs, ensuring that all content created by the user. It‘s owned by the user and stored in their wallet.
These dynamic NFTs are composable, such as "Comments", which are well understood in their own right, although comments as add-ons published on other users' original works,. Comments have to reference the original address (URI) of the original work. Comments also subject to the reference module conditions of the original publication. For example, Alice posts a thread and sets the comment restriction on this thread to require following the original publisher's account. If Bob wants to comment on the post, but does not hold the NFT, the comment will fail.
"Mirror" diffuses the original work from a new share, similar to the retweet feature we often use. Like i mentioned above，if mirror is successful, the mirror user can define which accounts can mirror or comment on the mirror. If another user collects the original content through this user's sharing, that user will receive a "mirror fee" from the others.
We know that users are allowed to collect publications from people they follow. This should be similar to the collection function, where users can set price, version size, and time limits for their published creative content, such as opening it for a set period of time or allowing only a certain amount to be collected. Followers could buy the content and the creator would profit from it.
Lens Protocol is completely open source for community use. Users can build social applications, analytics platforms, verification systems, DAO tools, and more from it.
The Lens Protocol is designed with modularity at its core, allowing for an unlimited number of use cases, and the community is constantly developing new features and allowing users to decide how they want to build and monetize their social graphs.
Current Lens partners include Polygon and Web3 name service providers. Lens is currently live on the Polygon Mumbai beta site, and there are plans to launch an alpha main site, although the timing has not been disclosed.
As social media like Lens continues to grow, it will gradually promote the importance and control of data ownership by users. The emerging social media we've seen before is mostly a combination of NFT and Defi, while Lens is more of a combination of NFT and DAO, and its modularity will allow the project to be modified and perfected, making it worth a try.