Web3 will unite users from social media platforms, says Aave exec

Web3, the third iteration of the internet, is rapidly approaching the consumer mainstream with the promise of disrupting the status quo of digital interactions and creating a new paradigm for democratic engagement. 

Lens Protocol is a decentralized social graph built by Aave with the vision of cultivating a Web3 environment in which creators are the primary point of focus.

Centered around nonfungible tokens (NFT), Lens hosts capabilities for developers to build applications analogous to social media, as well as analytic tools, integrations of decentralized finance (DeFi) functions, such as loans and staking, and user-governed decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO).

A Lens Protocol mission statement was cryptographically signed and endorsed by a number of high-profile figures from within the crypto and DeFi space, including Ryan Selkis, Ryan Sean Adams, Gmoney, Camila Russo, Andrew Wang and Josh Ong, among others. 

Cointelegraph sat down with Christina Beltramini, head of growth and partnerships at Aave, during the NFT.NYC in June to discuss the intentional growth trajectory of Lens, social graphs in the era of Web3 and the future of content creation.

After working for the likes of JPMorgan and Tidal, Beltramini assumed the role of global business development of music partnerships at prominent social media platform TikTok in mid-2019.

It was during this time she witnessed what she described as an innate lack of autonomy and bureaucratic constrictions that TikTok content creators experience when using the platform, most notably during the frequent requests to reinstate mistakenly deactivated accounts.

The evolution of Web3, coupled with her intrinsic desire to support the artistic expressions of content creators, was enough to convince Beltramini to pursue contributions toward a decentralized social future.

Excited to welcome Christina, coming from TikTok to Aave fam to lead the growth for the decentralized social graph, and all the innovation coming out of Aave. 2022 is going to push web3 closer to the mainstream https://t.co/SksQVdq2QQ

— stani.lens (,) (@StaniKulechov) December 21, 2021

Over the last few years, the industry has witnessed the emergence and adoption of digital identity services such as Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domains, Solana Name Service domains and NFT.com, among others. Beltramini shared her thoughts on how the profile aspect of Lens Protocol compares and differs from those examples:

“Name services don’t connect wallets to wallets or social signals. With ENS, I will know what your wallet is and I’ll be able to transfer to you, but I won’t actually be able to see the connections within your wallet. So, with Lens, your profile’s an NFT, [and] when you follow someone, that’s an NFT as well. And that’s what ties the association together.”

Profile NFTs are one of the core components of the Lens model. Issued to an individual’s wallet address, they aim to serve as a Web3 headquarters of sorts, enabling self-custody of data, the ability to publish authentic pieces of content on-chain, and built-in governance capacities should users wish to construct their own DAO.

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Modules and logic functions open up an entire ecosystem of interoperable NFTs. Other users of the platform can attain a FollowNFT for following a profile and CollectNFT for collecting unique pieces of content. Additionally, mirroring enables users to share, or essentially reblog, content while acknowledging the original owner.

By democratizing user data and attaching NFTs to the individual action, Lens considerably advances upon the traditional experiences of social media, commerce and digital consumer interaction.

Digital roots

The name Lens was inspired by the Lens Culinaris, the green flowering plant whose seeds produce the lentil. 

Beltramini expressed that this choice of branding was a conscious, deliberative decision to metaphorically symbolize “owning your digital roots” and nurturing a ground-up ecosystem that “we cultivate together as the community” before stating:

“We are the application layer, and having multiple protocols that speak together to build different experiences and applications on Lens is really with the community from the decision making and how the protocol will be governed.”

Societal concerns around the environmental expenditure of Bitcoin (BTC) mining and NFT minting have sparked decisive behaviors from crypto companies seeking to remain at the cultural forefront. Lens Protocol was built on the Polygon network to focus inherently on “scalability and environmental” factors, Beltramini said.