For the past 3 months, ALLSHIPS and Lens Protocol have partnered at the ALLSHIPS Creator House, collaborating on creative events, art residencies, dinner parties, and workshops. ALLSHIPS was born in 2019 as a response to the pitfalls of centralized social media- so working with Lens to explore the landscape of decentralized social media is a match made in heaven. Let’s explore why this shift in the way we engage with networks online is so deeply important to the future of creative culture in internet spaces. To better engage and understand this essay, I’d recommend minting your Lens profile and downloading Orb, one of my favorite ways to explore the protocol.
Lets begin at the beginning, when smartphone and network technologies evolved enough to make every human with a device a node in a global network. For the first time, we had creative tools in the palm of our hands that were also feedback loops- you can create, consume, and iterate, learning each time, attracting an audience around you that is interested in what you make. In 2011, we would agree to practically anything for access to that global network, and in fact, we all did. We gladly signed away our distribution rights in exchange to access to that network- a fact that enabled billions of people to connect across vast distances and form niche networks of like-minded individuals. This disruption was not without consequences of course- the rise of this new visual printing press basically destroyed the publishing industry- and wrought damage across our social systems with algorithms that turned us into dopamine addicts desperate for every shred of attention.
As time progressed and the technology evolved further, centralized social media became one of the most profitable industries in the world. All of the content, connection, and community created by the users generated a tremendous amount of value for advertisers- and one hundred percent of those profits flowed back into the centralized system. These companies profit off the efforts, and at the expense of their most active users. My artist friends began to realize the diminishing returns of these attention economies, and the cost to their own mental health, trying to keep up in an impossible race for daily attention. But where to go?
Alas, there was no safe haven- you simply can’t take your audience with you. If you spend 10 years building up hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, the only way to connect with those people is through Instagram. But what happens when the algorithm changes? What happens to your business when the advertising priorities shift and your reach is throttled in favor of the next shiny thing? There is nothing you can do- because you are building on rented land, not land you own.
And thus- we arrive at the essential need for decentralized systems, open social graphs on protocols that developers can build on top of. I truly believe the future of the social internet will thrive on decentralized rails. As time marches on, we are less and less willing to make those Faustian bargains with centralized social. If I am putting my blood, sweat and tears into building my social graph, I want to build on land I own. I want to be able to take that audience across the internet, through the evolving app landscape, and I want all of my effort to concentrate around the gravity of my sovereign online identity- my onchain wallet address.
That is exactly what Lens is building, as a base protocol for an open graph social internet, with a growing roster of apps that allow users to engage with their communities in whatever way feels like the best fit for their specific purposes. Whether its on Orb, which feels like a perfect blend of Twitter, Instagram and Reddit, or t2, a layer that is built for text based work and people who focus on writing- I can take my hard-earned connections anywhere in the ecosystem, and with the click of a button connect with the people who have opted in to connecting with me.
We are in a new evolution of the internet- one where we can distance ourselves from economic models that are solely supported by advertising, where we can embrace peer-to-peer transactions, symbiotic creative communities, and systems of mutual support enabled by blockchain technology. To be able to mint our work to chain is to have a deeper, longer lasting layer that isn’t as dependent on circadian content cycles. I can build projects that last many years, while my posts on centralized social have a lifespan of just 24 hours. That deeper identity layer is something that is like my digital DNA, the substrate from which the entirety of my online efforts spring forth from. I feel better knowing that these new gardens aren’t growing on land we don’t own- they are growing on our own soil, and we can tend to our communities with deeper intention and effort.
It is still the early days, and the push and pull between centralized and decentralized systems will carry on. But even having the alternative option puts pressure on centralized systems to be more equitable, to be more supportive of the communities that make these places worth being. We have new tools to engage with interconnected online communities, and that gives us creatives a tremendous amount of leverage. And with that leverage, it’s time to renegotiate our relationship with the internet. Lens is a great place to start.
-Dave Krugman, Founder, ALLSHIPS
