Original Author |Lens Protocol

Compiled by | Odaily Planet Daily Nan Zhi

Lens announced the launch of Lens Network, aiming to support the large-scale adoption of decentralized social networks.

Lens's vision is to make social space more open and fair. Open means there are no restrictions at the protocol level - everyone can connect to the network and participate. Fair means everyone can benefit from the social space without worrying about censorship and can profit from more balanced monetization opportunities.

In order to lay a scalable foundation for the future social space, Lens has chosen what it considers to be a sound and forward-looking technology - zkSync's ZK Stack to develop the next generation of Lens.

Lens hopes that the digital social space will no longer be fragile and will no longer be controlled by social media giants; a user-centric internet will become the new norm.

On-chain Network

Today's social media networks trap users within walls controlled by corporate giants. These companies hoard user data on private servers, limiting user control and ownership. Switching platforms in Web2 means starting over and requires a lot of time to rebuild your social capital. This lack of data ownership and control not only imposes high switching costs on users, but also hinders competition and innovation, which is unfair.

On-chain networks disrupt this pattern, allowing users to own their social media identities and connections. In on-chain social networks, users can freely move their data and connections between social media applications, creating a less censored and more speech-free environment.

Scaling Decentralized Social Networks

In the past, on-chain networks have faced difficulties in supporting the high throughput required for mainstream applications. Building a decentralized, secure, and scalable system is a challenge. To achieve all three, trade-offs are usually necessary. To artificially increase scalability, on-chain networks are forced to compromise, weakening security or decentralization. This is what Vitalik Buterin calls the "trilemma" of blockchain.

Networks typically charge the same security cost for all transactions, which is why social networks cannot leverage on-chain security at scale.

Therefore, developers have to make choices between scalability, security, and cost. For social networks, we need to ask ourselves whether social network transactions require the same level of security and data integrity as financial transactions.

While social transactions may not require the same level of security as financial transactions, a fair and open social space does need to ensure that users are not harmed by data monopolies and walled gardens. On-chain security shifts power from corporate networks to users. When users own their social capital, they become "mobile citizens" who can bring their social capital (identity, content, and relationships) to any social space of their choice.

Solving the Blockchain "Trilemma" for Social Space

Ethereum provides basic security for DApps, supporting high composability and programmability, which come from the EVM. Recently, Optimism Rollups and ZK Rollups have extended the Ethereum network. Compared to Optimism Rollup, ZK Rollup has several advantages, including more advanced data compression techniques, which are published and verified on L1.

Although Rollups provide significant cost advantages for transactions, especially after the EIP-4844 update, scaling social interactions still face challenges. When using Optimism Rollup, data must be kept relevant and accessible for a period of time to check fraud proofs. This is expensive on L1. Rollups perform well in financial applications such as DeFi because they inherit the strong security of L1, ensuring final transaction records. Even if Rollup is compromised, L1 data can reveal fraudulent transactions and initiate the process of recovering funds from the Ethereum network. While social use cases do not require the full Rollup state security provided by Ethereum, some degree of security inherited from Ethereum is crucial for ensuring data integrity.

Further horizontal scalability can be achieved through solutions such as zkSync's hyperchains, which use ZK proofs for seamless communication while independently handling their states and transactions. They connect to a public bridge on Ethereum, achieving both security and decentralization at low cost, reaching a scale of millions of secure transactions per second. This breakthrough paves the way for the large-scale adoption of on-chain social networks, solving the "trilemma" of blockchain.

Validiums and Volitions

Validium is an extension solution that uses ZK compression technology to calculate and compress state transitions and batch them for publication to Ethereum, while publishing the state itself to a separate DA. By reducing costs, Validium is well-suited for price-sensitive social networks.

The modular approach of Validium separates security and data availability and combines ZK compression technology to ensure data integrity for social transactions at an appropriate level of security, while maintaining scalability.

Financial transactions are crucial for everyday social networks, and on-chain benefits from providing programmable financial pathways. These financial pathways can support a fairer redistribution of economic benefits, creating a better on-chain economic engine for creators, users, and developers.

Volition is an extension setup that makes it possible to implement two different transaction strategies on the same extension infrastructure. Validium is used to publish state transitions to Ethereum while storing the state on the DA provider, while Rollup can settle financial transactions on Ethereum while maintaining synchronized interoperability.

Lens Network Based on Hybrid Architecture

Lens officially announced the Lens Network extension infrastructure, aiming to support the large-scale adoption of decentralized social networks. Based on ZK Stack, Lens Network will be able to handle concurrent real-time transactions while ensuring data integrity. Lens Network will initially launch as an EVM-compatible Validium chain protected by Ethereum and transition to a Volition network based on zkSync in the third phase.

Phase 1: Seed - Validium on Ethereum

Phase 1 establishes the initial infrastructure to achieve scalability. Lens Network uses Validium to ensure the verifiability of user social activities. It also enables various features essential for social networks, including private interactions (e.g., emails) and public social interactions (e.g., posts), as well as public financial transactions.

Validium batches all transactions and generates a ZK proof to prove the validity of all state changes. This proof is then submitted to Ethereum to ensure network 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 interactions. The public Validium chain uses DA providers to ensure the security of public state data. Private transactions within private Validium rely on a self-protecting system, where these transactions are submitted to the Ethereum blockchain for verification through prepared batch proofs without disclosing data publicly.

Phase 3: Blossom - Complete Volition

Phase 3 enhances transaction security and user control by combining ZK Rollup and Validium technologies. The main change is that Ethereum will protect financial transactions within the public Rollup component. Users can choose to use Ethereum DA for more secure protection of financial transactions, while choosing Validium to protect social transactions and settle them to a separate DA. Private transactions for private use cases are handled in separate instances.

Next Generation Lens Protocol: Cross-chain Hub

The new version of the Lens Protocol will be developed and launched on the Lens Network, serving as the social network hub for the entire Lens user community. The new version of the Lens Protocol will not only be a shared social network, but will also operate as a cross-chain protocol, with its main hub on Lens Network and zkSync. The new version of the Lens Protocol can also be deployed on other EVM and non-EVM networks. Our goal is to enable developers to build their social applications on any supported network and connect to the Lens user community through technologies such as CCIP.

User Experience Improvements

Lens Network aims to provide a smooth user experience equivalent to Web2, while offering next-generation ownership and monetization capabilities. Lens will utilize account abstraction to enable transactions without gas payment and signatures, and support embedded wallets. Cross-chain transactions will also become easier, with plans to achieve sub-second transaction times. This is to create a more open and fair social space, allowing everyone to participate and enjoy.

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