Aave founder's social platform "Lens" launches on Polygon testnet with a focus on NFTs!

Last year, the founder of the DeFi lending protocol Aave announced plans to launch an Ethereum-based version of Twitter. This vision is now close to becoming a reality as he revealed that the decentralized social media protocol, Lens Protocol, has been launched on the testnet and is expected to be deployed on Polygon first.

Building Around NFTs

Lens Protocol has several interesting mechanisms. It has traditional social platform features such as profiles, comments, reposts, all of which are supported by NFTs. The official believes that this gives users real control.

Profile NFTs: ProfileNFTs are non-custodial, permissionless, and composable. NFTs will include user posts, comments, and all historical footprints on the platform. A single address can hold multiple profile NFTs.

If profiles and followers grow, they can also transform into DAOs and hold profile NFTs through multi-signature.

Follow NFTs: Users who follow others on the platform can receive a Follower NFT. Each NFT has a unique Token ID, allowing loyal followers to vote in governance snapshots and trade on the open market.

Creators can customize Follow NFTs, for example, requiring payment of 5 MATIC to acquire. They can also modify governance functions, such as increasing voting weight based on how long a user has held the Follow NFT.

Content Publishing: Covering images, music, videos, and art, users can publish any type of creation supported by IPFS through the Lens Protocol. Published content will be directly loaded into the user's ProfileNFTs, ensuring that all content is stored in their wallet.

Collectibles: The Collect feature gives creators profit opportunities. Creators can set prices, content quantity, and time limits for limited-time or limited-edition auctions and make them available for followers to purchase.

Mirror: Mirror is the sharing feature. Shared content can be collected and traded, and the sharing user may receive a share of the profits from the original publisher. However, the Mirror feature may vary depending on the settings of the original creator. Users may not be able to share if they do not follow the original author or do not hold the Follow NFT.

The official claims that Lens Protocol has been deployed on the Mumbai testnet but has not disclosed the mainnet launch date.

Currently, Lens may have difficulty gaining traction, including NFT-related weight settings that may be relatively unfriendly to users unfamiliar with code. If UX/UI is optimized in the future, it may have the potential to compete with traditional social platforms.

Furthermore, although the platform has not been launched, the official urges users to visit the official website to sign a public letter via Metamask and join the Discord group. It is unclear if users will receive any form of reward.