TLDR;
- more content is going onchain
- Smart Posts on Lens make social content actionable, you only need a wallet
- crypto social will not be confined to clients/feeds and will be distributed across the web (think: FB widgets)
- more protocols (ex: Zora, Sound, Uniswap) will build Smart Posts integrations
- many users' first mints will occur from a Smart Post
more content is going onchain
I don't think this headline needs any support, go check the number of songs being minted on sound.xyz or NFT trading volume on Blur.
I honestly found it cringe when people went from "music NFTs" to "onchain music" overnight, almost in unison.
But onchain media does make sense to me.
It was an easy concept to grasp because Lens has been producing onchain media since v1 in 2022. They introduced this with their collectable posts, a way of minting social content as an NFT. You could also attach smart contract functionality to the share event (mirrors), leading to a definition of onchain media - content, whether text, audio, or video, that incorporates some kind of smart contract functionality and whose provenance or ownership can be tied to a crypto wallet.
And Lens v2 takes this to the next level with Smart Posts.
Smart Posts make social content actionable
Bring other Web3 protocols directly into your posts - mint NFTs from other platforms, build an on-chain vote directly into a post - or integrate any other smart contract.
Leverage the rest of Web3 in a composable way, conveniently inside Lens posts.
A Smart Post is a Lens Post that is initialized with an open action module (a smart contract) to execute any onchain action from the social feed. Some possibilities:
- Mint NFTs via Zora, Sound, Mirror
- Swap any ERC20 via Uniswap
- Provide liquidity on Aave
- Join a social club on MadFi
And all of these can be crosschain; even though Lens Protocol is on Polygon, we can write our open action module to send/receive cross-chain messages via LayerZero or Wormhole.
The screenshot shared above is from our Cross-chain Zora Mint action. It allows creators to make a Lens post that promotes any Zora NFT, and anyone can mint it right from the post - no matter what chain the NFT is on. For a quick overview on how it works, check out this demo.
crypto social will not be confined to feeds
This is something I knew from the moment Lens v1 hit testnet in April 2022. And it's honestly what led me to start building MadFi.
Lens Protocol can be seen as the backend for social media apps, yes. But if we extrapolate further, the social posts themselves can be rendered on any webpage. Now, that doesn't offer much functionality alone, beyond layering content with social interactions. But when you add onchain actions to this layer of social context, you get something very powerful for commerce, advertising, and more.
An example that comes to mind is when websites started adding Facebook widgets so you could follow the relevant social conversation, join events, and more useful things - without having to go to their Facebook page.
I don't think I need to remind anyone why crypto social is better than traditional social media. Just in case: you can own your social network, monetize it however you want, and measure + reward your most loyal followers - without being platform-dependent.
Since data on Lens is publicly available to consume, we can see the same distribution opportunity occur.
more protocols will integrate Smart Posts
I love it when I see projects boil down all the complicated aspects of their protocol into a very simple, easy to consume widget.
Take the Uniswap Swap Widget
Or the Superfluid Subscription Widget
I see the same opportunity in Smart Posts. Protocols can take whatever the entry point for their protocol is, wrap it with an open action module, and enable anyone to interact with the protocol right from a social post.
What does that smart contract look like? Pretty much like this:
Well it's not that simple, but the docs do a good job of walking you through all of it.
If you want to see full source code for our Cross-chain Zora Mint action, it's verified on polygonscan.
And if you want to support cross-chain Zora mints on your website, check out our integration guide.
many first-time mints will occur from a Smart Post
This is actually something I'm predicting will occur, and is currently only possible with Lens.
For every person that minted a dumb animal JPEG in 2023, there's about a dozen kids on TikTok that never made it to the mint page.
Since these Smart Posts can be embedded on any webpage, and all it takes is an authenticated wallet (or better yet, a managed wallet) to mint, it greatly improves the conversion rates. These make for great marketing campaigns, if brands/agencies/creators simple include the webpage link in their IG story or TikTok live stream. The benefit comes from repeat activations, rewards, and measuring onchain data.
And this is something I'm not sure many people outside of this space understand; crypto social won't replace traditional social media, but simply augment it.
We're building the monetization and rewards layer for crypto social over at MadFi, and we'll be shipping v2 of our protocol very soon.
