Aave protocol developer secures $31 million for Lens, a high-performance blockchain for social apps

Spaciousthe corporate behind Ghost, Lens And Familybroadcasts a fundraising of 31 million {dollars} led by Light Speed ​​Faction. With Lens, Avara is constructing a decentralized protocol that might function infrastructure for social and client functions.

This funding announcement comes a couple of weeks after Lens revealed a totally revamped model of its protocol, Lens v3. Initially constructed on the Polygon blockchain, client functions that use Lens v2 embrace an NFT creation and sharing utility. ZoraTwitter-like platforms Hey And Cairoand sub-community centered utility Orb.

Why are crypto builders all the time attempting to create the subsequent large social community? It comes all the way down to decentralization and person focus.

Customers interacting with a Lens-based utility personal their id and content material. Purposes constructed on the Lens community are interfaces for interacting with the blockchain. The Lens staff even calls these apps customers. If customers wish to migrate to a brand new social platform as a result of they’re sad with sure adjustments, they will merely log into one other Lens-powered app.

Likewise, whereas mainstream social apps incentivize creators with rewards packages and subscription methods, the businesses behind these social networks dictate the foundations.

“I believe social media could be very monetary proper now, however most of that monetary worth goes from the advertisers to the platform and little or no to the person,” the Avara founder instructed TechCrunch , Stani Kulechov (pictured above). On high of that, it seems like customers are “locked into a particular database.”

With a decentralized social app, “it essentially disrupts the mannequin the place customers are extra vital and have extra energy than the platform itself,” Kulechov added. This might probably result in extra clear income sharing contracts with higher rewards for creators.

Social primitives

With Lens v3, the corporate is tackling one of many greatest issues with Web3 social experiences: transaction prices. Writing an article on a web3 platform means signing a transaction on an underlying blockchain. Though Layer 2 networks have helped scale back transaction prices in recent times, they continue to be a barrier to entry for large-scale client functions.

“We launched it on Polygon, however the community would not scale for client use… the place a transaction can value a fraction of a cent. And that is principally why we selected a stack the place we wished to get the advantages of Ethereum. All these transactions that occur on Lens Community, we take them, we bundle them with ZK proofs, after which put these transitions into Ethereum,” Kulechov stated.

The Lens community now makes use of zkSync as core know-how with validiums. Not like Base or Arbitrum, validiums are a off-chain transaction method – they make transactions less expensive.

“So this enables us to create far more inexpensive transactions than current rollups. And that creates new design house for extra client functions,” Kulechov stated.

The thought is that interactions with the Lens community ought to value roughly as a lot because the cloud server prices. Builders ought to be capable of soak up these prices for his or her customers. “Our purpose right here is to say that blockchains needs to be free for customers to make use of, in the identical approach because the Web,” Kulechov stated.

Lens defines a handful of “social primitives” as core options of the protocol, specifically accounts, usernames, graphs, feeds, and teams. Every person account can create a number of usernames (throughout a number of apps) and begin following different customers to create a number of charts. They’ll additionally be a part of teams.

The good characteristic is that builders can create a algorithm to permit or prohibit entry to feeds (and particular person posts inside feeds). For instance, you’ll be able to host an occasion and provides away an NFT to every occasion attendee. A web based neighborhood could possibly be reserved for individuals holding this NFT.

You too can prohibit content material to individuals who pay a specific amount. Token management could possibly be used to create subscriber-only feeds or posts (a “web3 substack”).

As for content material moderation, Kulechov believes that “a protocol needs to be as impartial as potential. After which, on the utility degree, it is the appliance that has to handle moderation.

Lens plans to launch the Lens v3 mainnet sooner or later throughout the first quarter of 2025. It will likely be fascinating to see if this protocol improve shakes issues up on the subject of decentralized social networks – current networks stay for the second area of interest networks.

Along with Lightspeed Faction, contributors within the spherical embrace Alchemy, Avail, Circle, Consensys, DFG, Material Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Stellarcore, Superscript, Re7 and Wintermute Ventures, in addition to angel buyers Anurag Arjun, Anton Bukov, Rune Christensen. , Alex Gluchowski, Aleksander Leonard Larsen, Loi Luu, Spencer Midday and Duncan Robinson.