Lens Launches V3 Testnet For Developers

Developers can now explore the upcoming v3 iteration of Lens, the decentralized social media graph from Avara, Aave’s parent company.

On Nov 12, Avara launched a “developer preview” deployment of Lens v3, allowing developers to begin exploring the upgraded protocol on testnet and prepare to migrate existing Lens applications.

Lens v3 includes an on-chain toolkit allowing developers to easily incorporate modular social features including immutable account creation, social feeds, and membership groups into applications. It also supports email or phone-based login processes, new software development kits and APIs, and support for instant asset bridging.

“Lens offers a highly customizable set of powerful Social Features developers can choose from,” Avara said. “Developers can build experiences with easy-to-plug-in Social Legos’ [which] can be set as either mutable for community governance or as immutable smart contracts.”

Avara noted that existing Lens Profiles will be migrated to Lens v3 as immutable accounts. Users can link their accounts to multiple usernames, which comprise transferable NFTs and can facilitate royalties from secondary market sales.

Lens v3 also introduces Graphs that map account-to-account connections across the protocol, giving developers the ability to tap into existing network effects. Graphs can facilitate free, token-gated, or paid connections between accounts, with developers able to program additional bespoke rules for account connections.

Access to the Lens's new feeds can also be free, premium, or token-gated.

The upcoming v3 iteration also introduces Lens Storage Nodes, which allows users to manage data storage via Ethereum Virtual Machine smart contracts.

No user costs

Avara emphasized its commitment to ensuring that users of Lens-based applications do not incur fees for using the protocol.

Lens v2 was deployed on ZKsync Era and leverages Avail for data availability, with Avar asserting that the associated costs are low enough to be comfortably absorbed by developers.

“We believe that consumer on-chain apps should be able to support free everyday social interactions without compromising user ownership and portability,” Lens said.

Users have created more than 569,000 Lens Profiles, with the protocol hosting more than 10,000 weekly average users, according to Dune.