During the last weeks, everyone's attention was so focused on speculation and shitcoins that the things I really like about the blockchain - tech and innovation - were totally overshadowed.

Today I want to try to reverse this trend and explain why you are likely to have a “one night stand” with Lens Network and probably fall in love with it.

This is my very first article, so before starting, click on the button below to subscribe to my mirror profile and get notified when I’ll write the second, the third, fourth…. 🤝

Is Lens Network Intriguing?

At the end of 2024, Lens closed an investment round for $31M to scale Lens Network, the new L2 layer aimed at revolutionizing SocialFi. Lens is set to be the fastest, cheapest, and safest Ethereum layer 2 to bring mainstream adoption to Web3.

Lens will adopt GHO as its native gas token, users will be able to onboard using social authentication and data will live in the ecosystem, not just locked in a single app.

“Ok bro, but why shouldn’t I use any other very good L2 like Base, Polygon, Optimism… Or even Farcaster!?”

The new Lens Network teases you with a sexy modular architecture, by importing the Lens Social Protocol natively and through a new concept: Lens Storage Nodes.

A Sexy Modular Architecture

Every blockchain needs to have an execution layer where transactions are processed and validated, a Data Availability (aka DA) layer to ensure all nodes can access the data necessary to validate transactions, and a consensus + settlement layer to finalize and record new blocks in the blockchain.

L1 networks are usually monolithic blockchains, meaning the nodes participating in the blockchain run all these functionalities. This represents a significant scalability limit: as the number of transactions increases, blockchain nodes must scale horizontally or vertically, which can be very expensive.

All layers are important for scalability in blockchains. Blockchains require a fast execution layer and an economical, scalable method to ensure that transaction data is always accessible for validation. The consensus mechanism (like PoS or PoW) and the settlement layer are critical as they dictate the level of security within a blockchain.

What most Ethereum Layer 2 solutions share in common is typically the consensus and settlement layer, which is Ethereum itself - pretty obvious, but it's worth pointing out!

Lens's execution layer is built using the ZkSync stack, with AvailDA serving as its data availability layer. This contrasts with other L2s like Arbitrum or Base, where data availability is managed through blobs, temporary and limited space within L1 blocks where L2 transaction data can be posted.

Using DA layers like Avail, means that as transactions number increase, the DA layer can handle it without increasing the transaction cost because it scales indefinitely.

Avail - optimized for zk stacks like ZkSync - allows Lens to have transaction costs near zero.

For this reason, Lens will be a super-sexy socialFi platform where transactions are nearly free and the network is fast and secure at the same time. If you see Lens at a party, maybe after a couple of Gin-Ts, you may have something together…

Comfort Zone: V3 Lens Social Protocol

A one night stand becomes “dating” when you have some sort of “comfort zone“ in the relationship.

The comfort zone created by Lens is defined by its built-in modules, known as Social Features, which developers can access and utilize through the Lens SDK.

Lens v3 has features - smart contracts - like Account, App, Group, Feed, Graph, and more, which are deployed on the network. Developers can use these features with a React SDK, so they don't need to learn Solidity.

Let’s make an example: To create a post, developers should just create the post metadata:

javascript

const metadata = textOnly({
  content: `Subscribe to Fabriziogianni7 Mirror folks!`,
});

And then post it on-chain with just two lines of code:

javascript

import { uri } from "@lens-protocol/client";

const result = await post(sessionClient, { contentUri: uri("lens://4f91ca…") }); // contentUri is the posted metadata uri

I think that’s the kind of comfort zone I’m looking for after a long day of coding and troublesh**ting bugs.

To avoid getting bored, developers can build custom Social Features on top of the existing ones and create unique use cases (I already got something in my mind 🤪).

Storage Nodes

Well, you began with a casual approach but now you are in a cozy relationship (you didn’t expect that right?!), and the next thing will make you able to build and have memories with your new L2 fiancee (well hopefully you’ll understand why, if not, reach out - I will explain).

A Lens Storage Node is designed to provide user-controlled, decentralized, yet efficient storage for digital content.

So far in Web3, we've seen storage solutions like IPFS, which is decentralized but does not guarantee data persistence; centralized solutions, which can be subject to censorship and unauthorized modifications; and decentralized permanent storage, which can be too expensive and not flexible or user-friendly.

Lens Storage Nodes indeed provide decentralized storage at a cost similar to that of centralized service providers, with good performance and Amazon-S3-like developer experience.

These nodes are built on top of a kubo-based IPFS cluster, exposing data interfaces via a REST-like JSON API and validating actions like update, delete, and edit using an Access Control Layer (aka ACL) based on smart contracts.

When uploading data, users can add rules (ACL) to validate future attempts to modify or delete data. All actions that edit or delete data on the storage nodes need to be signed with the user's private key, ensuring that only the data owner can modify or delete it.

Uploading a file to a storage node is easy as doing something like that:

const { uri } = await storageClient.uploadFile(input.files[0]);

Are you interested looking into Lens Storage Nodes? Your friendly neighborhood Fabrizio - that’s me, writing the article 🥷🏻- suggests you check out the docs: Lens Storage Nodes Docs.

Conclusion

There you have it - Lens Network is serious about competing with Farcaster on an infrastructure and tooling level - and it’s ready to make you fall in love.

If you have some “passion” with socialFi ecosystems like Farcaster, Len’s will be a super-sexy-bomb alternative you want to flirt with.

As Stani claims in his article: “costs on Lens are minimal enough, similar to cloud server costs, for developers to easily absorb them.”

Developers will have powerful infra and tools necessary to develop in the socialFi ecosystem and the costs will be so low that the dev itself can take care of it (bro like shipping some backend on a cloud provider; don’t you ask Jo Mama the money to do it?), finally abstracting blockchain usage from end user and creating new business models than the simple “Let’s do that in exchange of a small fee” approach.

Haven't you tried the Lens testnet yet? Here's your chance -→ ** Using Lens Network.**