Facebook, Instagram and TikTok will be dead in 10 years
Influencers are gaining power, and they’re tired of unequal economics and the constant threat of censorship
They’ll soon lead a “great migration” to decentralized platforms like @LensProtocol
Here’s why and how
👇
🧵
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#LensProtocol is a decentralized “social graph” that allows users to own their online relationships and content (we’ll explain what this means below)
It has not yet released a token, but over 100K lens #NFTs trade on OpenSea with an average floor price of $108
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This thread we will cover:
• What’s a social graph?
• The problem with social media
• How #Lens solves this problem
• How it works
• The Lens ecosystem
• How big is the market for Lens?
• Key competitors
• What is Lens’ moat?
• What’s its long-term potential?
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🟢 What is a social graph?
Your social graph is a record of all the friendships and relationships you’ve formed on social networking sites. This includes your:
• Facebook friends
• Twitter followers
• LinkedIn connections
• YouTube subscribers
• etc…
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In fact, it’s not just a LIST of your friends, it’s a record of EVERY single interaction you’ve ever had with them
Every Instagram post, like on Facebook, comment on Twitter and share on TikTok is all recorded online in your social graph
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As such, your social graph is – quite frankly – your entire online existence
Given that 5 billion people spend an average of 8 hours online a day, it’s also probably the most valuable asset that you own
This poses a major problem…
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🟢 Problem
Unfortunately, you don’t own your social graph…
Big tech does
A handful of companies own your profile, your network of friends, the content you’ve created and all the information you’ve put online
(Meta alone owns Facebook, WhatApp, Messenger and Instagram)
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This means that they can:
❌ Ban you or lock you out of your account
❌ Charge you for monetizing your content
❌ Prevent you from cross-posting or moving your content, followers or friends to a new platform
And that’s just what Big Tech wants…
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Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and TikTok don’t want you to own your social graph
They don’t want you to leave their platforms because YOU are their product
They attract more users with content YOU create and they make money by selling YOUR data to advertisers
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They’ve built empires worth over $200B off of YOUR efforts
And when was the last time Facebook sent you a check for that?
Probably never
Doesn’t seem fair, does it?
Fortunately there is a solution…
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🟢 Solution
Decentralized social protocols allow users to own their own social graph
This means that users:
✅ Can’t be banned or censored
✅ Can freely move their network of friends to other social protocols
✅ Can monetize their content and data
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🟢 Protocol Overview
One of the leading projects working on decentralized social networks is @LensProtocol
Lens allows users to fully own their social graph (i.e. their profiles, content and relationships) and share access with whatever apps they please
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This idea may seem a bit counterintuitive, because it’s the opposite of what we’re used to
Right now, most of us have dozens of social graphs (one for Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, etc…)
These graphs are owned by their respective companies who grant US access to use them
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With Lens, you would only have ONE social graph – which you would own – and YOU would grant access to the different social networks
So instead of Facebook owning your friend list and granting you access, you would own it and grant Facebook (or the #Web3 equivalent) access
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🟢 Ecosystem
The #Lens social graph is open source, so anyone can build applications on top of it
Notable protocols on Lens include:
• Phaver (~ Facebook)
• Lenster (~ Twitter)
• Lenstube (~ Youtube)
• Orb (~ LinkedIn)
• Lensta (~ Instagram)
Let’s look at each
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◾ Phaver
@phaverapp is like a decentralized Facebook
Unlike traditional social networks, it utilizes a “share-to-earn” model, that rewards the top content creators and curators
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◾ Lenster
@lensterxyz is Lens’ answer to Twitter
It connects to your #Lens social graph to allow you to share short messages, images, videos, etc… with your friends
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◾ Lenstube
As the name suggests, @lenstubexyz is like a decentralized YouTube
It leverages your Lens social graph to allow you to connect with friends and view both long-form and short-form videos (a la TikTok or Youtube Shorts)
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◾ Orb
@orbapp_ is a #Polygon-based decentralized social media app for professionals
In other words, the “Web3 Linkedin”
Like the other apps listed, Orb doesn’t own your professional network, instead it uses your social graph on Lens
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◾ Lensta
Lensta is aspiring to be the “Instagram” of #Web3
It uses your Lens social graph to connect you with your friends and allow you to view their image posts
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While most #dapps on Lens today are consumer and entertainment focused, there’s a huge opportunity in enterprise applications like:
• Communications (e.g. Slack, Discord)
• Task Management (e.g. Asana, Trello)
• Knowledge management (e.g. Notion)
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Again, this may all seem counterintuitive
From a user perspective, these apps all work similarly to what you’re used to on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok etc…
But because they’re built on Lens, they allow YOU to fully own your profile, relationships and content
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🟢 How does Lens Work?
Like with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter, each user starts with a profile
This profile is represented as an #NFT, giving the user full ownership of all of their content and relationships
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Users can take a variety of actions through their profile, including:
• Publishing
• Commenting
• Mirroring
• Follow other profiles
• Collecting
Let’s take a look at each
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◾Publish
Like with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter, users can create, or “publish”, content
They can post text (like this tweet!), pictures, videos, etc…
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Because this can take up a lot of storage space, the data for these publications is stored off-chain on a service like #IPFS or #Arweave and a link to that data is contained in the Profile #NFT
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◾Comment
Users can also comment on their friends posts
Comments are also stored off-chain and link to the Profile #NFT
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◾ Mirror
“Mirroring” is Lens’ version of “sharing” on Facebook or “retweeting” on Twitter
From a technical perspective, they are treated the same as publications and comments
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◾ Follow
Like most social networks, users can “friend” or “follow” other users
This works a bit different from its Web 2.0 counterparts though
When users of the Lens Protocol follow an account, they receive a “Follow #NFT” that can be encoded with additional value
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◾ Collect
The “collect” option allows users to monetize their content
Creators can select an option when posting that allows fans to purchase their works
They can choose to limit the collection to a certain amount of time or only allow a certain number of purchases
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The groundbreaking thing about #Lens is that all of these interactions are preserved across the different social networks a user is connected to
In today’s world, it would be like everytime you comment on a friend’s post in Facebook it would also show up in their TikTok!
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🟢 Market Overview
The global market for social media is enormous
It was value at $223B in 2022 and is expected to grow to $833B in 2026
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The space is dominated by a handful of players including:
• Meta (owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger)
• Google (owns YouTube)
• Tencent (owns TikTok and QQ)
• TikTok
• Telegram
• Twitter
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While small, a decentralized social ecosystem is emerging as a competitor
Key protocols include:
• Front-end dapps (e.g. Lenster)
• Application infrastructure (e.g. #ENS)
• Social Graph (e.g. #Lens)
• Content Storage (e.g. #Filecoin)
• L1/L2s (e.g. #Ethereum)
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🟢 Competitive Overview
There are currently four main competitors providing social graph services
• Lens
• Farcaster
• CyberConnect
• DeSo
Of the four, @LensProtocol is the market leader
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🟢 Competitive Moat
Indeed, #LensProtocol has achieved significant traction
According @SixdegreeLab’s analysis on Dune, it has 290K users who have made:
• 2.2M posts
• 803K comments
• 2.5M collections
• 1.6M mirrors
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🟢 Team
Lens Protocol was created by @StaniKulechov - the Founder of @AaveAave - and launched in 2022 on #Polygon
@dabit3 is also heavily involved with the project along with:
• @0xChristina
• @bnj
• @brad_or_bradley
• @devjoshstevens
• @yogicodes
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🟢 #Tokenomics
Lens Protocol is currently in the closed beta stage and has not launched a #token yet, nor announced when it plans to do so
(of course, there are always rumors of an #airdrop)
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That said, users can purchase Lens #NFTs on #OpenSea (there are over 100K) or go directly to the Lens website to see if they are eligible to mint a profile #NFT
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🟢 Long-Term Potential
It may seem difficult to believe that these upstart protocols will break the deeply entrenched moats of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok
But there’s a growing trend that may speed this migration -
The rise of the #influencer economy
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In particular, there are three reasons why decentralized social networks may disrupt “Big Social”:
1. The growing influence of creators
2. Big Tech’s unfair treatment of influencers
3. The inherent benefits of #DeSo to creators
Let’s look at each…
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◾ Rise of the Influencer Economy
Creators are gaining more power and influence
The “creator economy” has grown from $14B in 2021 to $104B today, and the top influencers are commanding enormous sums:
• Mr. Beast - $54M
• Jake Paul - $45M
• Markiplier - $38M
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◾ Unfair Treatment
Unfortunately, creators face several challenges under the current system:
❌ They get < than 3% of platform revenues
❌ Earnings are biased towards big accounts
❌ They must rely on email lists and personal blogs to mitigate the risk of censorship
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◾ The Great Migration
As such, there is a growing incentive for influencers to move their accounts to decentralized protocols where they have full control over their content
This may disrupt the industry, because where influencers go, fans will follow
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There are a lot of great sources with info on @LensProtocol. Follow them if you want to learn more!
@0xChristina
@2irl4u
@akibablade
@akirtovskis
@brad_or_bradley
@dabit3
@davidesilverman
@G_Rak
@LensProtocol_CN
@lensterxyz
@lenstubexyz
@levychain
@orbapp_
@phaverapp
tl;dr
• Social networks abuse creators
• #DeSo allows creators to own their relationships & content
• @LensProtocol is the dominant DeSo network
• It’s operating in a market with a ~$1T potential
• The rise of the influencer economy may speed the transition to DeSo
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