Decentralized finance platform Aave has announced the launch of Lens Protocol, a decentralized social media platform built on the Polygon blockchain. Named after lens culinaris, a plant that has a symbiotic relationship with soil bacteria, the open-source “Web3, smart contracts-based social graph” is based on an ecosystem of dynamic non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Users create NFT-based profiles that “contain the history of all posts, mirrors, comments, and other content you generate.” In contrast, the content and follows on the platform are similarly represented by NFTs.

Users will own their own data on Lens.

Users will own their own data on Lens, while applications can plug into the open social graph. Following someone on the platform also generates a “follow NFT,” while users can collect published work by creators on the platform and re-publish it through a “mirror” feature—which acts as a referral link, earning the sharer a cut from anyone that collects the original content via the mirror. According to its website, lens Protocol is also exploring ideas, including DAODAO profiles and social-based verification.

The initial plan was for the platform to launch on Ethereum.

Aave’s move into social media has been planned for some time. In July 2021, Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov revealed that the DeFi giant was planning an alternative to Twitter. The initial plan was for the social media platform to launch on Ethereum. However, the recent launch shows that Lens Protocol has been built on layer 2 scaling solution Polygon. Kulechov had argued that Twitter doesn’t allow its users to monetize their tweets and retweets and that if a user moves to another platform, they have to “start from scratch.”