Weeks after Aave founder Stani Kulechov went to Twitter jail for calling himself the "interim CEO of Twitter," the DeFi lender's long-heralded decentralized social media platform is going live.
Lens Protocol opened Wednesday on the Polygon blockchain mainnet, Kulechov announced at the Permissionless conference. The platform, developed by Aave Companies, allows developers to build their own decentralized social media networks where users fully own their data.
"All [Web 3] innovations have been driven by the idea of ownership," Kulechov said via Telegram. "Web 3 Social ensures that users have control over their content, which drives applications and algorithms to compete with each other to give users the best experience."
The protocol was first announced in February, but today people can start minting their profiles, an Aave spokesperson said. About 50 applications are already based on Lens, he added.
Social graph protocols are popping up all over the blockchain space to combat concerns about data ownership. CyberConnect, a company that brings data out of the woodwork, said Tuesday that it has raised $15 million to build its protocol. And Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has also long supported efforts to experiment with decentralized social media concepts.
Aave's Lens differs in its focus on NFTs: each creator gets their own. These "profile" NFTs are connected to their followers and communities, and interact with the 50+ platforms available at launch.
Aave has also launched a $250,000 grant program to fund projects that want to develop Dapps on Lens.