Chances are, if you’ve been around the Web3 ecosystem for some time, you have heard of Lens Protocol (from the makers of Aave protocol).
Lens Protocol is a Web3, user-owned social graph network established on Polygon’s blockchain Matic. This innovative blockchain protocol is making waves in the space, allowing users to own their data and bring it to any application built on top of Lens Protocol.
“As the true owners of their content, creators no longer need to worry about losing their content, audience, and livelihood based on the whims of an individual platform’s algorithms and policies.” ~Lens Protocol
In this blog post, we will explore what Lens Protocol is, its recent partnership, and the exciting potential it holds for the future.
Lens Protocol + ENS
ENS ecosystem allows users to establish domain names that can be used as their decentralized identities, operate businesses, and run decentralized websites. The entire ecosystem has been growing at a tremendous rate, and we expect to see steady growth going into 2023.
Last month, Lens protocol announced its official partnership with the ENS Domain Ecosystem. In this article, we explore areas of this partnership, what to expect, and the benefits derived for both parties and their respective ecosystems.
1/3 Lens Protocol + ENS = frens 🤝
We have partnered with @ensdomains to allow Lens data to be queried via ENS resolution.
Lens data such as display name, profile photo, cover image, and address can now be queried as ENS Resource records using EIP-3668 Off-chain resolution.
— Lens Protocol 🌿 (@LensProtocol) October 4, 2022
What to Expect with this Partnership?
Lens Protocol empowers creators to own the links between themselves and their community, by forming a fully composable, user-owned social graph. Lens Protocol has so far minted 104977 NFTs, with over 97080 unique owners, the token LPP has a market cap of $4,939,892.49
Since creators and users own their data, any dApps or tools that are built on Lens Protocol will have the option to transfer creator data. As owners of their content, creators don’t have to worry about losing their content, audience, or livelihood based on the whims of a platform’s algorithms and policies (Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook changing policies that affect their content creators).
The last few months have been arduous for creators, with both Twitter and Instagram changing their policies without including the creators’ perspective in place. This area is where Lens protocol comes into play, by allowing users to leverage decentralized identities and own their data. Creators can now safeguard their content without possible censorship.
The collaboration allows Lens protocol data to be queried via ENS resolution. This would also allow users more users to be onboarded, by creating additional utility and feature sets, both ecosystems would benefit from this partnership. The partnership would also allow developers to design meaningful social experiences in Lens while allowing users to utilize their .eth domain names for this activation.
What does Lens Protocol Enable?
Lens data, which includes display names, profile photos, cover images, and addresses can now be queried as ENS resource records.
This feature will be carried out using the EIP-3668 off-chain resolution. In general, off-chain transactions are cost-effective, quicker, and offer additional privacy. These transactions allow users to bypass expensive gas fees and use applications in a cost-effective manner.
The team has also announced that the code will be open-sourced which would allow other developers to create their own off-chain resolvers which utilize lens data and power up more dApps for the ecosystem.
Lens Protocol was established in early 2022, and so far it has gained a lot of traction in the Web3 communities due to the social layers embedded in the network. Social networks are a great way for users to be on-boarded to emerging technologies, it also creates a great tool for retention and educating users on the embedded ENS ecosystem.
While this partnership is in its initial stages, we are excited to see how it shapes the future of both ecosystems. From a user perspective, Lens protocol allows and embeds a social layer that will “enable ENS users to create their own micro-communities”. The additional utility would also allow ENS domain names to be having additional selling points.
We’ve already seen the ENS ecosystem reach record sales and transactional volume for their ENS Domain Names. With the addition of Lens protocol and its utility, we expect the ecosystem to be powered up further and embark on a growth trajectory for 2023.