Lens Protocol is intended to power social media platforms that can compete with centralized behemoths such as Twitter—and it is powered by NFTs.

A well-known DeFi lending protocol Aave is taking a different approach with its latest Web3 project, Lens Protocol, a decentralized social graph that uses NFT assets to power social media platforms.

While it appears that Lens Protocol is intended to compete with centralized social media platforms such as Twitter, it takes a very different approach. It essentially allows users to own their content by storing it as NFTs—one-of-a-kind blockchain-based tokens—in a crypto wallet. Because the protocol can be accessed by a wide range of apps and services, anyone can build on it.

Polygon, a sidechain scaling solution for Ethereum, the leading blockchain platform for decentralized apps (dapps) and NFTs, serves as the foundation for Lens Protocol. Polygon Blockchain enables more cheaper and faster, and less energy-intensive transactions than Ethereum's own mainnet, making it more viable for a social network based on a large number of NFT assets.

Social media is seen as an ideal use case for blockchain technology, enabling censorship-resistant platforms that allow users to own, control, and potentially profit from their own content.

Such platforms have yet to reach the scale of behemoths like Twitter and Facebook, though Ethereum-based Minds is one notable exception, with 14 million total users as of June 2021.

Last June, Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov tweeted,

It wasn't a fluke: Aave did start working on a decentralized social media competitor, but ultimately chose to build on Polygon rather than Ethereum's mainnet.

"We believe that content creators should own their audiences in a permissionless manner, where anyone can build new user experiences using the same on-chain social graph and data," Kulechov said at the time.

Aave first revealed the Lens Protocol branding and details in February, emphasizing the ability to create unique NFT-based profiles as well as have content saved via NFTs that users keep in their wallets. Early apps like LensFrens and Lenster are already utilizing the Lens Protocol, but they are not yet robust social media services.

Twitter, surprisingly, is also considering a potentially decentralized future. Under Dorsey's leadership, Twitter announced the formation of Bluesky, an initiative aimed at developing a decentralized social media protocol. Twitter is funding but not owning the project.