On November 11, Lens, a blockchain network with integrated on-chain social features, unveiled the Lens V3 Developer Preview. This suite includes powerful modular social features such as customizable feeds and flexible user accounts that are non-revocable and portable across Lens. It also offers robust community and monetization tools enforced by smart contracts. These innovations, embedded within Lens’s high-performance, low-cost blockchain, enable developers to craft user-centric social networks capable of mass adoption.
Lens's innovative social features, including Accounts, Usernames, Graphs, Feeds, and Groups, can be easily integrated into any application. Unlike traditional Web2 social networks that control content and monetization and make governance decisions, Lens allows full customization. Developers can establish their monetization models, manage access control over content and groups, and distribute governance to individuals or groups. These flexible features are supported by the Lens network, a bespoke architecture designed for high-volume, high-speed data processing suitable for various consumer use cases. To ensure a familiar user experience, Lens supports gasless and signless transactions, simple onboarding, seamless interactions, and USD payments.
“We’re thrilled to present the Lens Developer Preview and begin migrating existing data and apps to Lens,” said Lens Founder Stani Kulechov. “Lens offers modular, highly flexible features like ‘Social Legos,’ allowing developers to craft unique user experiences with custom rules and monetization models. For instance, Feeds serve as a powerful content curation and moderation tool, enabling specifications on who can post, comment, or curate—enforced on-chain—as well as options for pay-to-view, free, or token-gated content. Feeds facilitate personal blogs, interest feeds, collaborative newspaper-style initiatives, and more."
Over the past years, the Lens team has collaborated with dozens of application teams and over 550,000 users, understanding their challenges and responding to their requests. Feedback is a key component of our culture and is reflected in Lens Features. When Lens goes live on the mainnet in January, developers can utilize Lens’s intuitive developer toolkit and pre-integrated premier infrastructure, including Across Protocol, Alchemy, Chainlink, Dune, Safe, Tenderly, The Graph, and ThirdWeb. These partnerships make it straightforward for developers to build scalable applications.
Lens’s social features are conceived to provide developers with maximum flexibility and enable monetization capabilities. These new features include:
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Accounts: User-owned identities leveraging EVM addresses and account abstraction for gasless, signless transactions. Users can enjoy seamless single account logins for all Lens apps and features.
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Usernames: Unique identifiers linked to accounts. Users can create multiple usernames across namespaces, supporting distinct digital identities for different apps. Developers can utilize a global namespace or create custom ones, managing distribution and monetization options, including secondary market sales.
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Graphs: A new feature mapping connections between accounts, with custom rules like free, pay-to-connect, or token-gated connections. Developers can create app-specific graphs or use Lens’s global graph, tapping into an existing user network.
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Feeds: A key feature, Feeds support various social experiences, including blogs, news feeds, and forums. Developers can set rules for posting, monetization, and governance.
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Posts: Created through a feed, Posts include author-set rules, such as requiring payment to comment or allowing quotes only from followers.
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Groups: A highly requested feature enabling on-chain communities with custom membership rules around content access and governance rights. Developers can specify membership criteria, manage members, or delegate moderation rights.
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Actions: Customizable interactions categorized as global, account-based, or post-based. Developers can tailor actions for tasks like tipping, collecting, or engaging with external contracts.
Lens also introduces a new approach to content storage. Lens Content Nodes, built on IPFS and EVM-compatible chains, authenticate using EVM signatures and securely store data on Storage Nodes. This decentralized system enables users to upload, retrieve, edit, and delete content, with smart contracts managing access permissions, ensuring data integrity, and maintaining user control.
Built on ZKsync for horizontal scaling secured by Ethereum and storing chain state on Avail, the Lens network offers low costs comparable to cloud servers, allowing developers to absorb transaction fees. Lens is already integrated with top-tier ecosystems such as Circle (USDC), Consensys (Metamask), and Uniswap, alongside new social applications, joining the 20+ apps on Lens V2.
