According to Blockworks, the on-chain social network infrastructure Lens is set to get a new home. The new Lens Network will be built on the original Lens Protocol as part of zkSync’s ZK Stack hyperchains. The protocol is developed by Lens Lab, a subsidiary of Avara, the company behind DeFi giant Aave. Avara CEO Stani Kulechov believes that the non-financial applications of crypto, such as identity and online social interactions, have the potential to be even more significant.
Kulechov stated that while many people have financial capital, everyone has social capital, including the content they create, the relationships they form, and the identities they interact with. The ZK Stack chain will serve as a central hub for Lens, which will integrate seamlessly with other EVM and non-EVM blockchains, according to a blog post released on Tuesday. However, a testnet release of the new network is still several months away.
The current version of Lens has been operational on Polygon’s PoS chain since May 2002. The modular, open-source ZK Stack framework, based on the zkSync Era code, will provide Lens with horizontal scaling, connecting as many Lens chains as needed by zk bridges, according to Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski. He added that the system could accommodate one billion users without losing any verifiability properties.
Lens was a pioneer in on-chain social infrastructure, but it was initially conceived and developed when zk rollup technology was still considered years away from large-scale production. Kulechov explained that they aim to build open and fair social spaces where anyone can participate on a network level and own their social capital, something not possible with today's social networks.
In contrast to Farcaster, where posts and interactions are primarily off-chain, Lens is the only network that makes users the owners of their identities and their content, with everything happening on-chain. The financial terms related to the move and a strategy to incentivize users to migrate to the new version were not disclosed. Kulechov noted that the phased rollout would include inviting users to migrate during a testnet phase and then be upgraded into the mainnet when ready.