Two months after begging to allow anybody to mint a profile and join the network, the latest data on Lens Protocol reveals a growing interest in decentralized social networks (DeSo).
In the last thirty days, the rolling average of the revenue content creators earn for a "collect" has increased from $2 to $20.
Collects, tips, and sharing content are the top three ways users monetize attention on the blockchain-based social graph network. Users pay, on average, $38 per month for content, which means the revenue of the highest earners on the platform sits at around $1,300 monthly.
The data available on Dune was shared on a thread on X by Stani Kulechov, the CEO of Ethereum lending platform Aave, who launched Lens Protocol in May 2022. He commented that these latest numbers were "not bad for a network of 300k users."
More than dollars or Bitcoin, attention is the ultimate online currency. So much information is being produced online that it has become a cheap commodity. Attention, on the other hand, has never been harder to grab. According to the United Nations, "We are increasingly living in an 'attention economy' rather than an 'information economy'."
Social networks, with over 4.8 billion daily users (over 60% of the world's population), are the ultimate drivers of this economy.
Due to the size of the networks they control, companies like Meta Platforms have a disproportionate power to impose rules and guidelines on users that prioritize their enterprises' profit goals rather than the well-being of the communities they serve.
"The internet has always operated on an attention economy and monetization. Google democratized online earning with ads. Social networks were more reluctant to share revenue since they owned these platformed networks and distribution," noted Kulechov.
Decentralized social networks such as Lens Protocol or the also popular Farcaster present an alternative to the extractive business model imposed on the online public squares by the centralized companies that own them.
Banking on the decentralization and immutability of their underlying technology, these platforms ensure that users own their content and social relationships.
The architecture of Lens allows users to share content and maintain their social connections and achievements across all the 400 social dApps built on top of it. As every post on the ecosystem's apps can be minted as an NFT, Lens opens the door to new ways of monetizing and collaboration. Creators can share royalties with collaborators or share revenue with their supporters.
In March, Lens launched its own meme-coin project, Bonsai. Unlike most other meme-coins that lack utility, Bonsai was created with the specific purpose of being a community currency in the ecosystem, and it has become one of the top currencies with which users exchange value across several social projects on Lens, such as Orb, Hey, Buttrfly, Lenscan, Orna, Tape, and Lenspeer.
Due to the power and the network size of its centralized social media counterparts, DeSo is likely one of the most challenging Web3 sectors to break through. In 2023, Friend.tech became immensely popular, but before the year ended, it descended into oblivion.
While several challenges lay ahead for both Lens and the DeSo sector, the protocol's latest known metrics reveal consumers' desire to step away from the claws and control of traditional social media platforms.
