Lens Protocol

Lens Protocol is a decentralized social (DeSo) project developed by UK-based Aave, an open-source liquidity protocol. The Lens Protocol platform is deployed on the Polygon network and aims to provide users control of their content and the ability to monetize it.

The platform uses three layers of NFTs: LensHub, FollowNFT, and CollectNFT. A LensHub NFT is minted when a new profile is created, which is linked to a wallet address (multiple profiles can be created for a wallet address). These are upgradeable contracts that record a user’s content, including likes, comments, and reposts, as well as their audience relationships. A user’s original content (post, comment, repost) is known as publications, which can be customized with features like price and the ability to collect it for a certain period of time or a particular number of times. Meanwhile, a corresponding CollectNFT is created when a user collects a publication for the first time. In addition, when a user follows another user, a FollowNFT is created.

Furthermore, Lens Protocol allows Web3 developers to build or connect social applications on top of its platform, which are deployed on Polygon or other EVM-compliant networks. Moreover, the platform is designed with modularity at its core, which allows users to transfer their social graph across the many social media applications built on top of it. It launched its own scaling solution Bonsai , to improve the processing speed of transactions by handling its Polygon transactions off-chain at no cost. Users can, however, use the Bonsai network for transactions or the Polygon network directly.

As of April 2023, Lens Protocol was in closed beta, with 3.4 million NFTs (new profiles) and had an average monetization of roughly USD 50 per profile.

Aave, through Lens Protocol, acquired Web3 gaming developer Sonar for an undisclosed amount in December 2022. Sonar was formed out of Y Combinator in 2020 and has developed a namesake mobile Web3 metaverse gaming app that has ~20,000 monthly active users, as of December 2022. Following the acquisition, the company had planned to integrate Sonar with the Lens Protocol, with existing Sonar users being able to mint Lens profiles to create a singular identity within its metaverse and log into the game using the same.

Funding and financials

In November 2022, Lens secured investment from FTX Ventures , but the amount and the use of proceeds were not disclosed. It raised a further USD 15 million in seed funding in June 2023, in a round led by IDEO CoLab Ventures. These funds were earmarked towards its development and expanding its ecosystem.