Social media has infiltrated the on a regular basis lives of an enormous chunk of the worldwide inhabitants. With media giants like Fb and Twitter taking on a major share of individuals’s time and a focus, points should not scarce. The primary ache level stems from the solely centralized character of all these mega corporations.
With the rise of blockchain expertise and the development Web3 affords within the digital period, social media platforms are additionally certain to alter. The occasions of centralized entities hogging all management over this sector of the net world are gone.
As customers search extra transparency and management over their information, and traditional social media platforms take hit after hit for leaking buyer data, the blockchain area has a lot to supply.
How can social media turn out to be decentralized?
The present state of the social media trade permits large corporations to manage the knowledge it gathers from their customers totally. What’s extra, if stated corporations go bankrupt or resolve to dam you from their companies, your entire historical past and exercise stay locked inside the platform. Think about that Twitter goes bankrupt, as alluded to by new proprietor Elon Musk – that may imply all of your tweets, shares, likes, and follows will probably be without end gone together with the corporate.
The primary objective for social media platforms that look to turn out to be decentralized is to relinquish a few of that management. Most significantly, these platforms ought to let customers have entry to their very own information and govt decision-making powers over who will get to see this information.
And the blockchain is the right medium for this shift in perspective to occur. With decentralization on the core of the expertise, new social media algorithms and decentralized social graphs at the moment are permitting creators, customers, and corporations to personal their information and totally management it.
Presently, Lens Protocol is main the cost with an open social graph structure that goals to permit dapp builders the liberty to create blockchain-based social media platforms. Whereas nonetheless in beta, Lens has set formidable objectives to revolutionize the social media area.
What’s Lens Protocol?
Developed by the creators of the favored Aave liquidity protocol, Lens Protocol seeks to revolutionize the social media trade. Bringing decentralization and web3 capabilities to builders, the protocol has an open-source construction permitting creators to launch their very own social media platforms.
Furthermore, dapp builders who resolve to make use of the Lens infrastructure may profit from its modular design. All updates, adjustments, and upgrades to an software could be achieved in phases and thru completely different modules, permitting final inventive flexibility.
Lens protocol additionally helps enhance the authentication facet of social media and reduces faux accounts to a minimal. The decentralized infrastructure helps NFT profile authentication, which ensures that every one consumer information is attributed to the proprietor, and safely saved on the Polygon blockchain as an NFT.
And whereas new options just like the Lens protocol provide a wanted break from the centralized mannequin presently prevalent within the social media area, adoption of this expertise continues to be scarce.
Accelerating Web3 adoption with simple onboarding
Whereas Lens protocol is providing the answer to a growingly important downside, the adoption of this expertise continues to be shifting slowly. Centralized social media platforms have reigned for many years now, and customers nonetheless need assistance with onboarding to the social media of Web3.
What’s extra, Lens nonetheless solely permits whitelisted candidates to get entry to an authenticated profile NFT. This significantly reduces the quantity of people that can totally make the most of the decentralized social media platform answer.
Nevertheless, in an effort to create a gateway to Web3 social, corporations like Phaver try to get the phrase about Lens on the market and produce entry to extra individuals. The dapp permits customers to create off-chain profiles and nonetheless comply with the circulation of knowledge on Lens till they get a whitelist spot. As soon as this occurs, all their follows, and likes are robotically transferred on-chain and saved of their profile NFT.
“Many are proper now searching for alternate options for Twitter, and it is an excellent alternative to shift to extra moral Web3 choices, however onboarding continues to be very restricted. Phaver helps with that by offering a “Web2.5” place to begin the place anybody can entry and comply with the Lens content material and be waitlisted for his or her very personal profile NFT.”
– Joonatan Lintala, CEO, Phaver.
As Web3 social media turns into extra fashionable, Lens will appeal to much more consideration, which is why the platform continues to be testing out entry solely by whitelist spots. However if you’re desirous to get entangled with the decentralized way forward for social media, platforms like Phaver are an excellent begin.
With the speedy development the Web3 area is experiencing, the social media trade is certain to be affected, and probably for the higher. What’s extra, the undoubted advantages Web3 social will deliver to the trade could be simply the factor to assist deliver the coveted “subsequent billion customers” into the area. Nonetheless, to get there, the trade wants not solely scalable options like Lens, but additionally user-friendly onboarding and the precise instruments to welcome non-natives to crypto.
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