Lens launches infrastructure Lens Network to support mass adoption of decentralized social networks
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Lens launches infrastructure Lens Network to support mass adoption of decentralized social networks
Lens Network features high scalability, censorship resistance, and low cost. The next-generation Lens Protocol will become a cross-chain hub.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Lens Protocol
Translation: Nan Zhi, Odaily Planet Daily
Lens announces the launch of Lens Network, aiming to support mass adoption of decentralized social networks.
Lens’s vision is to make social spaces more open and fair. Open means no restrictions at the protocol level—anyone can connect to and participate in the network. Fair means everyone benefits from the social space without fear of censorship, and profits through more balanced monetization opportunities.
To lay a scalable foundation for the future of social spaces, Lens has chosen what it considers sound and forward-looking technology—zkSync’s ZK Stack—to develop the next-generation Lens.
Lens envisions digital social spaces that are no longer fragile or controlled by social media giants; user-centric internet will become the new norm.
On-chain Networks
Today's social media networks trap users within walled gardens controlled by corporate giants. These companies hoard user data on private servers, limiting user control and ownership. Switching platforms in Web2 means starting over, requiring significant time to rebuild your social capital. This lack of data ownership and control not only imposes high switching costs on users but also stifles competition and innovation—it’s unfair.
On-chain networks disrupt this model by enabling users to own their social media identities and connections. In an on-chain social network, users can freely move their data and connections across social media apps, creating an environment with less censorship and greater freedom of expression.
Scaling Decentralized Social Networks
In the past, on-chain networks have struggled to achieve the high throughput required for mainstream applications. Building systems that are decentralized, secure, and scalable is challenging. Achieving all three often requires trade-offs. To artificially increase scalability, on-chain networks were forced to compromise, weakening security or decentralization. This is what Vitalik Buterin calls the blockchain "trilemma."
Networks typically charge the same security cost for all transactions, which is why social networks haven't been able to widely leverage on-chain security.
As a result, developers had to choose between scalability, security, and cost. For social networks, we need to ask ourselves: do social transactions require the same level of security and data integrity as financial transactions?
While social transactions may not require the same degree of security as financial ones, a fair and open social space does need to ensure users are protected from data monopolies and walled gardens. On-chain security transfers power from corporate networks to users. When users own their social capital, they become "portable citizens," able to bring their social capital (identity, content, and relationships) to any social space they choose.
Solving the Blockchain Trilemma for Social Spaces
Ethereum provides foundational security for DApps, supporting high composability and programmability—features derived from the EVM. Recently, Optimism Rollups and ZK Rollups have extended the Ethereum network. Compared to Optimism Rollups, ZK Rollups offer several advantages, including more advanced data compression techniques, with data published and verified on L1.
Although Rollups offer significant transaction cost benefits—especially after the EIP-4844 upgrade—scaling social interactions still presents challenges. With Optimism Rollups, data must remain relevant and accessible for a period to verify fraud proofs, which is expensive on L1. Rollups excel in financial applications like DeFi precisely because they inherit strong L1 security, ensuring final transaction records. Even if a Rollup is compromised, L1 data can reveal fraudulent transactions and initiate fund recovery from the Ethereum network. While social use cases don’t require full Rollup state security provided by Ethereum, inheriting some level of security from Ethereum is crucial to ensure data integrity.
Further horizontal scalability can be achieved through solutions like zkSync’s hyperchains, which use ZK proofs for seamless communication while independently processing each other’s states and transactions. They connect to a common bridge on Ethereum, achieving both security and decentralization at low cost, scaling to millions of secure transactions per second. This breakthrough paves the way for mass adoption of on-chain social networks, resolving the "blockchain trilemma."
Validiums and Volitions
Validium is a scaling solution that uses ZK compression technology to compute, compress, and batch state transitions before publishing them to Ethereum, while keeping the state itself on a separate DA layer. By reducing costs, Validium is ideal for price-sensitive social networks.
Validium’s modular approach separates security and data availability, combining it with ZK compression to ensure social transactions maintain data integrity under appropriate security levels while preserving scalability.
Financial transactions are also critical for daily social networking. The benefit of bringing them on-chain is that it enables programmable financial pathways. These pathways can support fairer redistribution of economic benefits, creating a better on-chain economic engine for creators, users, and developers.
Volition is a scaling setup that allows two different transaction strategies on the same scaling infrastructure. Validium publishes state transitions to Ethereum while storing state with a DA provider, whereas Rollup settles financial transactions fully on Ethereum while maintaining synchronized interoperability.
Lens Network Based on Hybrid Architecture
Lens officially unveils its Lens Network scaling infrastructure, designed to support mass adoption of decentralized social networks. Built on ZK Stack, Lens Network will handle concurrent real-time transactions while ensuring data integrity. Lens Network will initially launch as an Ethereum-secured, EVM-compatible Validium chain and transition in phase three to a Volition network based on zkSync’s ZK Stack.
Phase 1: Seed – Validium on Ethereum
Phase 1 establishes the initial infrastructure for scalability. Lens Network uses Validium to ensure users’ social activities are always verifiable. It enables essential social network features, including private interactions (e.g., messaging) and public social interactions (e.g., posts), along with public financial transactions.
Validium batches all transactions and generates a ZK proof verifying that all state changes are valid. This proof is then submitted to Ethereum, ensuring the network’s integrity.
Phase 2: Growth – Introducing DA Providers
In Phase 2, Lens Network will create independent and synchronized public and private Validium chains to support various social network use cases with different levels of private and public interaction. The public Validium chain uses a DA provider to secure public state data. Private transactions rely on a self-protecting system within a private Validium, with batch proofs prepared and submitted to the Ethereum blockchain for validation—without disclosing the data publicly.
Phase 3: Bloom – Full Volition
Phase 3 enhances transaction security and user control by combining ZK Rollup and Validium technologies. The key change is that Ethereum will protect financial transactions within the public Rollup component. Users can choose to secure financial transactions more safely using Ethereum’s DA, while opting for Validium to protect social transactions settled on a separate DA. Private transactions for private use cases are processed in separate instances.
Next-Gen Lens Protocol: Cross-Chain Hub
The new version of the Lens Protocol will be developed and launched on Lens Network as the central social hub for the entire Lens user base. The new Lens Protocol will not only serve as a shared social network but also operate as a cross-chain protocol, with its primary hub located on Lens Network and zkSync. The updated Lens Protocol can also be deployed on other EVM and non-EVM networks. Our goal is to enable developers to build their social apps on any supported network and connect to the Lens user base via technologies like CCIP.
User Experience Improvements
Lens Network aims to deliver a Web2-like seamless user experience while offering next-generation ownership and monetization capabilities. Lens will leverage account abstraction to enable gasless and signature-free transactions and support embedded wallets. Cross-chain interactions across networks will become significantly easier, with sub-second transaction times planned. The goal is to create a more open and fair social space where everyone can participate and thrive.
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