1 00:00:00,280 --> 00:00:04,360 This is Epicenter Episode 512 with guest Stani Kulikov. 2 00:00:18,600 --> 00:00:21,000 Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the 3 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,880 technologies, projects and people driving decentralization, 4 00:00:23,880 --> 00:00:26,640 the blockchain revolution. I'm Frederica Ans and I'm here 5 00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:29,440 with Meher Roy. Today we're speaking with Stani, 6 00:00:29,840 --> 00:00:33,720 who is the founder of Arva Companies, the company the 7 00:00:33,720 --> 00:00:36,920 company unsurprisingly behind Arva, which we covered a while 8 00:00:36,920 --> 00:00:41,320 back, and also social network Lens, which we will speak about 9 00:00:41,680 --> 00:00:43,320 today. Stani, welcome back. 10 00:00:44,840 --> 00:00:47,400 Thanks for having me here again, Frederick. 11 00:00:47,400 --> 00:00:50,000 This is. It's always great to be here. 12 00:00:50,960 --> 00:00:53,840 Cool. We had you on not so long ago. 13 00:00:54,680 --> 00:00:58,080 Then we spoke about ARVA V3 very tangentially. 14 00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:02,320 I think we mentioned Lens, but today we're here to kind of make 15 00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:05,480 up for that shoot coming. So sunny. 16 00:01:05,480 --> 00:01:10,760 In a nutshell, what is Lens tell us about the origin story and 17 00:01:11,120 --> 00:01:13,440 what it set out to do? I remember something very 18 00:01:13,680 --> 00:01:16,960 vaguely about you applying to be kind of the Twitter CEO. 19 00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:22,880 Yeah, that was becoming a self claimed Twitter CEO. 20 00:01:22,880 --> 00:01:26,920 While there was a big chaos going on everywhere, obviously 21 00:01:26,920 --> 00:01:30,370 that was a joke. But somehow people really 22 00:01:30,490 --> 00:01:33,450 thought about that that's actually happening, which I 23 00:01:33,650 --> 00:01:35,730 couldn't imagine being a CEO of Twitter. 24 00:01:37,290 --> 00:01:41,130 But yeah, that was fun. And Lens itself is a set of 25 00:01:41,130 --> 00:01:44,890 smart contracts and tools that allow you to build the three 26 00:01:44,890 --> 00:01:51,850 social applications or make your application the three social and 27 00:01:51,850 --> 00:01:54,970 what it means that you can create things like. 28 00:01:56,070 --> 00:02:00,830 Web chip forward handles profiles, ability to collect 29 00:02:00,830 --> 00:02:04,390 content as well and make content available in the future. 30 00:02:04,390 --> 00:02:08,910 So something that's missing now in all this kind of like an 31 00:02:08,910 --> 00:02:13,870 Internet social applications is that these platforms are run by 32 00:02:13,950 --> 00:02:19,070 businesses, you know and they can go down at some point and we 33 00:02:19,070 --> 00:02:23,080 keep be the people we. Create a lot of these Internet 34 00:02:23,080 --> 00:02:26,640 artifacts and and if these platforms are going down, we'll 35 00:02:26,640 --> 00:02:30,760 lose all those interesting, culturally relevant artifacts 36 00:02:30,760 --> 00:02:34,000 that we create online. So in in a nutshell, it's 37 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:36,720 basically a set of different tools that solve different 38 00:02:36,960 --> 00:02:40,800 challenges. Owning your audience, having the 39 00:02:40,800 --> 00:02:46,240 ownership for that, Having ability to store your content in 40 00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:51,090 a decentralized storage. And other kind of other 41 00:02:51,450 --> 00:02:55,010 primitives we we call. So it doesn't solve one 42 00:02:55,130 --> 00:03:00,090 particular challenge that someone might have or want to 43 00:03:00,090 --> 00:03:03,330 use the pre social. But actually solves multiple of 44 00:03:03,330 --> 00:03:08,050 those things and it really depends of what developers are 45 00:03:08,050 --> 00:03:10,170 building. So what of those primitives they 46 00:03:10,170 --> 00:03:12,490 actually want to use to solve their problem. 47 00:03:12,490 --> 00:03:17,290 So it can be as simple as adding a collect bottom into a blog 48 00:03:17,290 --> 00:03:19,560 post. You know, port by lens were 49 00:03:20,680 --> 00:03:25,320 adding profiles or a follower graph to your existing web tree 50 00:03:25,320 --> 00:03:27,480 application or even traditional application? 51 00:03:28,600 --> 00:03:30,360 Okay, Kind of. I see why. 52 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:35,120 There are some aspects of social networks where you feel 53 00:03:35,120 --> 00:03:40,360 uncomfortable with them being owned by companies. 54 00:03:40,520 --> 00:03:44,040 So tell us how lens functions. So you said it's a set of smart 55 00:03:44,040 --> 00:03:47,400 contracts, but kind of who's written those smart contracts? 56 00:03:47,820 --> 00:03:50,060 Are they upgradeable? Who has admin rights? 57 00:03:50,060 --> 00:03:52,980 So who do they effectively belong to? 58 00:03:52,980 --> 00:03:55,180 Someone. Yeah, it's a good question. 59 00:03:55,180 --> 00:03:59,780 So obviously at this stage, lens protocol, I mean we hit a couple 60 00:03:59,780 --> 00:04:05,380 of months ago a milestone of being one year online actually. 61 00:04:05,380 --> 00:04:09,620 So we've been building for two years now, one year live and 62 00:04:09,620 --> 00:04:14,340 still beta. So basically we're launching a 63 00:04:14,340 --> 00:04:16,700 V2, which is an improvement of what? 64 00:04:17,380 --> 00:04:20,220 We had a first vision of what lens could actually be and 65 00:04:20,220 --> 00:04:23,860 bringing more flexibility into what could be built in terms of 66 00:04:23,860 --> 00:04:26,700 the smartphone check itself. There's different things that 67 00:04:26,700 --> 00:04:30,860 actually provide immutability, for example, the ownership of 68 00:04:30,860 --> 00:04:34,140 your profile. So that's always belongs to you. 69 00:04:34,540 --> 00:04:38,380 But certain features are still under upgradeability and made it 70 00:04:38,380 --> 00:04:42,300 because it's very early. There is kind of like a soft 71 00:04:42,300 --> 00:04:45,100 governance at this point. So we introduced. 72 00:04:46,150 --> 00:04:52,110 Two months ago libs short for Lens Improvement Proposals, and 73 00:04:52,110 --> 00:04:56,470 they're therefore actually soft polling for the developer 74 00:04:56,470 --> 00:05:00,230 community and in overall the Lens community, how the protocol 75 00:05:00,230 --> 00:05:03,070 could be evolved, different kinds of improvements that could 76 00:05:03,070 --> 00:05:08,190 be made, but it's part of the whole process of progressively 77 00:05:08,190 --> 00:05:12,390 decentralizing as the protocol gets more mature. 78 00:05:14,390 --> 00:05:17,910 And what ownership actually means is, I want to pinpoint 79 00:05:17,910 --> 00:05:22,830 that is we have this concept about crypto in general that 80 00:05:23,190 --> 00:05:28,190 once you have your keys, you own the assets that are on that key. 81 00:05:28,510 --> 00:05:33,070 So we simply extend that idea not only covering let's say your 82 00:05:33,070 --> 00:05:38,350 crypto assets, but also the profile that you are using 83 00:05:38,510 --> 00:05:42,440 ongoing basis to. Communicate with other people 84 00:05:42,440 --> 00:05:47,160 and establish connections over Lens protocol or wherever you 85 00:05:47,160 --> 00:05:53,640 are integrating Lens Stanley, is it correct to view Lens as a 86 00:05:55,200 --> 00:05:59,200 developer platform for social media applications? 87 00:05:59,200 --> 00:06:07,040 Meaning that Lens itself is not thinking of the sort of end user 88 00:06:07,040 --> 00:06:11,730 interface or. The end user format in which 89 00:06:11,730 --> 00:06:16,610 content might be delivered, but rather it's it seeks to be one 90 00:06:16,610 --> 00:06:19,890 layer below where. It provides a lot of primitives 91 00:06:19,930 --> 00:06:23,450 through which people could build, I don't know, Twitter, 92 00:06:23,450 --> 00:06:28,050 like clone or or any any clone essentially of a social media 93 00:06:28,050 --> 00:06:31,050 application or an entirely new social media application. 94 00:06:32,170 --> 00:06:34,930 Yeah. I mean, in the beginning, what 95 00:06:34,930 --> 00:06:38,450 we wanted to establish, our very early vision was that. 96 00:06:39,900 --> 00:06:44,620 We have quite a good conviction of let's say what social media 97 00:06:44,660 --> 00:06:50,220 builders need to build and what could be built on on on with 98 00:06:50,220 --> 00:06:52,380 Lens. Actually, in the very beginning 99 00:06:52,380 --> 00:06:54,500 that there was a lot of discussion for the past couple 100 00:06:54,500 --> 00:07:00,700 of years about the existing platforms and the lack of user 101 00:07:00,700 --> 00:07:03,700 ownership. Things like for example owning 102 00:07:03,700 --> 00:07:07,550 your handle or. Owning the relationships that 103 00:07:07,550 --> 00:07:10,430 you create with your audience, for example from creator 104 00:07:10,430 --> 00:07:15,430 perspective or any user perspective and also the idea 105 00:07:15,430 --> 00:07:20,190 that's how we can avoid for example censoring in certain 106 00:07:20,750 --> 00:07:23,190 scenarios. So how we can build more 107 00:07:23,510 --> 00:07:27,750 equitable social media networking behavior. 108 00:07:28,430 --> 00:07:31,310 So in that sense kind of we noticed that a lot of the 109 00:07:31,310 --> 00:07:34,710 applications were tuning into written based content, so. 110 00:07:35,270 --> 00:07:38,070 If you look at the car ZD lens ecosystem, most of the 111 00:07:38,070 --> 00:07:42,150 applications are heavily relying on written text. 112 00:07:42,150 --> 00:07:47,790 We also have some applications that are focusing also on audio 113 00:07:47,790 --> 00:07:52,270 and video, but they really are trying to solve existing kind of 114 00:07:53,550 --> 00:07:58,350 applications and making them just more virtually powered and 115 00:07:58,350 --> 00:08:02,350 I think that's fine, but for what it what it what we think 116 00:08:02,350 --> 00:08:06,680 is. Exciting is a fee can with Lens 117 00:08:06,760 --> 00:08:11,360 enable the new experiences. So what if because of Lens, it's 118 00:08:11,480 --> 00:08:13,600 more easier to build Webg Social? 119 00:08:14,800 --> 00:08:20,040 Meaning that as a developer or social media founder, you don't 120 00:08:20,040 --> 00:08:24,040 need to focus necessarily on rebuilding a network, but you 121 00:08:24,040 --> 00:08:28,960 could actually tap into a shared network or have the flexibility 122 00:08:28,960 --> 00:08:31,850 to also. Create a new network if that's 123 00:08:31,930 --> 00:08:36,330 what you see as valuable. So the way I like to compare 124 00:08:36,330 --> 00:08:41,929 lens protocol and the vision is similar to something like 125 00:08:41,970 --> 00:08:45,370 Ethereum and many of the protocols and define that. 126 00:08:45,450 --> 00:08:48,970 Or maybe on the underlying networks where you provide 127 00:08:49,290 --> 00:08:55,570 infrastructure for and design space for developers, traders 128 00:08:55,610 --> 00:08:59,890 and everyone to innovate and the more you have that design space. 129 00:09:00,220 --> 00:09:01,980 You will see that innovation coming. 130 00:09:01,980 --> 00:09:05,940 So we basically have taken a couple of steps forward and 131 00:09:05,940 --> 00:09:09,260 trying to guide and and think what kind of things could be 132 00:09:09,260 --> 00:09:13,060 built on Lens. And today we have taken like 180 133 00:09:13,060 --> 00:09:17,100 degrees back and thinking like how we can actually be less 134 00:09:17,100 --> 00:09:21,620 involved and how we actually can create more space for developers 135 00:09:21,620 --> 00:09:26,860 to build those new experiences and make the protocol less and 136 00:09:26,860 --> 00:09:29,340 less opinionated and more and more open. 137 00:09:29,930 --> 00:09:33,370 And that's for example, some of the features that are coming in. 138 00:09:33,490 --> 00:09:38,690 The LSV 2 actually opens a new surface for composability. 139 00:09:38,690 --> 00:09:43,290 So lens protocol, lens applications talking to or 140 00:09:43,290 --> 00:09:46,090 interacting with the other protocols built on the same 141 00:09:47,050 --> 00:09:52,290 network. I'd like to take the analogy of. 142 00:09:53,610 --> 00:09:57,490 Lens protocol being an Ethereum like substrate on which lots of 143 00:09:57,490 --> 00:10:00,410 different social media applications can flower a little 144 00:10:00,410 --> 00:10:05,090 bit. So I was around in crypto when 145 00:10:05,690 --> 00:10:13,770 the Ethereum white paper came out in 2030 and to me like 146 00:10:13,970 --> 00:10:18,930 Vitalics, Vitalics genius was he saw a lot of different things 147 00:10:18,930 --> 00:10:22,730 that people were trying to build like master coin, counterparty. 148 00:10:23,640 --> 00:10:26,640 Quarter party wasn't there yet. Master coin was the main thing. 149 00:10:26,640 --> 00:10:30,360 Colored coins and master coin and other applications that 150 00:10:30,360 --> 00:10:35,160 people were imagining. And he was able to come up with 151 00:10:35,160 --> 00:10:41,760 a primitive, a gas consuming virtual machine, the Ethereum 152 00:10:41,760 --> 00:10:45,600 Virtual Machine during complete gas consuming virtual machine. 153 00:10:45,600 --> 00:10:51,120 The Ethereum Virtual Machine has a technical solution saying if 154 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:56,450 we had this primitive. All of these application 155 00:10:56,450 --> 00:11:01,610 developers would be enabled at once, so you have to build just 156 00:11:01,610 --> 00:11:05,610 one thing and it would enable a huge, diverse group of 157 00:11:05,610 --> 00:11:10,130 developers. When I hear about lens and I 158 00:11:10,170 --> 00:11:14,890 hear about your vision, it's almost like my skeptical mind 159 00:11:14,890 --> 00:11:18,850 says I don't think there is something like a Turing complete 160 00:11:18,890 --> 00:11:22,480 virtual machine. Equivalent for social media that 161 00:11:22,760 --> 00:11:27,000 if I pay this primitive it's going to satisfy a wide range of 162 00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:28,680 social media application developers. 163 00:11:28,680 --> 00:11:33,120 In my mind it feels every social media application developers 164 00:11:33,120 --> 00:11:39,200 needs then be quite different, quite heterogeneous and one 165 00:11:39,200 --> 00:11:42,800 primitive at the infrastructure level or two primitives at the 166 00:11:42,800 --> 00:11:48,480 infrastructure level won't be able to hit diverse needs so. 167 00:11:48,800 --> 00:11:52,040 Convince me. Otherwise that actually 168 00:11:52,040 --> 00:11:53,360 something like that. It's possible. 169 00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:58,360 Yeah, that's actually quite fascinating because that's 170 00:11:58,360 --> 00:12:03,240 exactly where we've come along. So we started in a way where 171 00:12:03,280 --> 00:12:06,840 we're thinking that, you know, each and every social media 172 00:12:06,840 --> 00:12:12,280 application has this particular set of features or behavior. 173 00:12:12,280 --> 00:12:17,240 So we basically can offer this as a protocol and something that 174 00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:21,590 we learned quite. Even even just by building and 175 00:12:21,590 --> 00:12:26,070 developing and getting feedback from different developers and 176 00:12:26,070 --> 00:12:29,510 watching the the user behavior and and how these applications 177 00:12:29,510 --> 00:12:33,910 are built is that this social media landscape is is very wide 178 00:12:34,830 --> 00:12:40,630 and offering a kind of like a protocol wide solution is always 179 00:12:40,630 --> 00:12:44,190 going to be quite difficult because it comes as a package 180 00:12:44,750 --> 00:12:47,790 and what we noticed is that certain. 181 00:12:49,790 --> 00:12:52,630 Social media applications in most cases they might have 182 00:12:52,750 --> 00:12:58,470 similar features so they might have for example profiles follow 183 00:12:58,470 --> 00:13:00,670 graphs. But then when you go to text 184 00:13:00,670 --> 00:13:04,950 based applications then you have publications and publication 185 00:13:04,950 --> 00:13:10,470 might have sub features as well and then bunch of other things 186 00:13:10,830 --> 00:13:14,290 that might different so. And that's the beauty of social. 187 00:13:14,290 --> 00:13:21,570 So the more wider the spaces, the more innovation we can see. 188 00:13:21,930 --> 00:13:26,450 And what we realized is that offering more of like a package 189 00:13:27,450 --> 00:13:30,690 protocol is actually quite difficult. 190 00:13:30,810 --> 00:13:34,690 And what actually works better is that we basically slice up 191 00:13:34,930 --> 00:13:37,210 the protocol and all the primitives that we have. 192 00:13:37,530 --> 00:13:41,490 So the things how we humans behave socially so. 193 00:13:41,940 --> 00:13:45,140 What are those things that we do not only on the Internet but 194 00:13:45,220 --> 00:13:49,100 outside of the Internet? How do we form social capital or 195 00:13:49,860 --> 00:13:52,820 let's say, relationships? How do we produce content? 196 00:13:53,180 --> 00:13:55,060 How do we distribute content as well? 197 00:13:55,540 --> 00:13:59,860 And putting those into separate categories and offering them as 198 00:14:00,100 --> 00:14:04,260 primitives. And the key here is that a 199 00:14:04,700 --> 00:14:08,740 developer can actually choose what you need from that 200 00:14:08,740 --> 00:14:11,770 primitive stack. That is virtually powered 201 00:14:12,210 --> 00:14:16,050 because some of the elements of your social application doesn't 202 00:14:16,050 --> 00:14:21,010 need to be on the blockchain or doesn't need to require data 203 00:14:21,010 --> 00:14:24,330 availability, but some do depending on what is the use 204 00:14:24,330 --> 00:14:26,170 case. And I think that's the kind of 205 00:14:26,170 --> 00:14:32,890 like important thing there. So we have to figure out the 206 00:14:33,050 --> 00:14:36,530 existing primitives and I think we kind of know them. 207 00:14:36,530 --> 00:14:39,250 We kind of see that. You know, here's the different 208 00:14:39,250 --> 00:14:42,370 primitives that social media applications are using. 209 00:14:42,970 --> 00:14:49,250 But I think there is even like a bigger area to learn of what we 210 00:14:49,250 --> 00:14:53,370 can actually do with Web Tree because we're, for example, 211 00:14:53,370 --> 00:14:56,450 using the blockchain, the ability to create digital 212 00:14:56,450 --> 00:15:01,810 scarcity or using the time stamp machine and how do we kind of 213 00:15:01,810 --> 00:15:04,170 create new primitives. And I think that's the most 214 00:15:04,170 --> 00:15:08,360 exciting part of my work where. We're looking kind of like more 215 00:15:08,440 --> 00:15:13,280 in the future and trying things out and and seeing what are 216 00:15:13,280 --> 00:15:16,440 these primitives that could actually be very empowering for 217 00:15:16,680 --> 00:15:18,840 builders to create new, new applications. 218 00:15:20,120 --> 00:15:21,840 Can you walk us through these primitives? 219 00:15:21,840 --> 00:15:25,880 So I mean the obvious kind of the obvious first example would 220 00:15:25,880 --> 00:15:28,400 kind of be like a trust graph, yes. 221 00:15:28,480 --> 00:15:31,920 And that's kind of the thing that probably definitely should 222 00:15:31,920 --> 00:15:34,200 be on chain if anything is going to be on chain. 223 00:15:34,540 --> 00:15:37,260 And then kind of walk us through the other things that kind of 224 00:15:37,260 --> 00:15:39,180 you have identified as social primitives. 225 00:15:39,580 --> 00:15:43,380 I think the trust graph where social graph is an excellent 226 00:15:43,380 --> 00:15:47,300 example. So one of one interesting idea 227 00:15:47,300 --> 00:15:50,740 about the trust graph for example is that you normally 228 00:15:50,740 --> 00:15:54,860 when you build a social media application, you use a database 229 00:15:54,900 --> 00:15:59,780 and you usually have your user base and those users aren't 230 00:15:59,780 --> 00:16:02,460 publicly visible where the users right? 231 00:16:03,230 --> 00:16:08,790 But when you're using the three powered social graph, that user 232 00:16:08,790 --> 00:16:13,750 base is actually public and what's interesting there is that 233 00:16:13,950 --> 00:16:18,510 you can tap into that public and shared user graph as well. 234 00:16:19,510 --> 00:16:24,830 And for example that if you create a new experience and you 235 00:16:24,830 --> 00:16:29,870 want to get everyone on lens to use it, it's quite. 236 00:16:30,410 --> 00:16:35,810 Simple to enable assigning with lens, meaning that you log into 237 00:16:35,810 --> 00:16:40,810 that application and if you have a less profile you can as a 238 00:16:41,050 --> 00:16:43,850 builder you can invite those users. 239 00:16:44,130 --> 00:16:47,610 So that mitigates the idea of cold start problem. 240 00:16:48,210 --> 00:16:52,930 And then there is kind of a layers of social graph and also 241 00:16:52,930 --> 00:16:55,930 layers of interest graphs, so. You could look into the 242 00:16:55,930 --> 00:16:59,770 blockchain and see that's okay. What are people doing there? 243 00:17:00,450 --> 00:17:04,089 What are the social behavior or ownership factors that could 244 00:17:04,089 --> 00:17:07,089 actually be beneficial for my use case? 245 00:17:07,569 --> 00:17:11,970 And you can invite someone who has a lens profile but also have 246 00:17:12,050 --> 00:17:17,490 a specific categories of Nft's as well because that might flag 247 00:17:17,490 --> 00:17:21,650 the interest that you have on chain verified data and to use 248 00:17:22,170 --> 00:17:26,010 your application. So I find this part of social 249 00:17:26,010 --> 00:17:31,170 graph fascinating because it brings new concept for users, 250 00:17:31,330 --> 00:17:35,490 for builders especially that are haven't used to a shared graph 251 00:17:35,570 --> 00:17:39,050 or like a public social graph. Then there's a concept of 252 00:17:39,050 --> 00:17:45,130 profiles, and in V1 you have a handle in a profile that are 253 00:17:45,330 --> 00:17:48,850 combined together, so each profile has a handle, but on V2 254 00:17:48,850 --> 00:17:51,610 they're separated so there's a profile in FT. 255 00:17:52,350 --> 00:17:55,830 That give access to your profile and a handle, and that is 256 00:17:56,030 --> 00:18:01,070 basically a handle and you can use also a ENS handle if you 257 00:18:01,070 --> 00:18:05,510 already own that. So handles are a way of identify 258 00:18:06,310 --> 00:18:08,990 who you as a user are and signal that out. 259 00:18:09,590 --> 00:18:13,910 But a profile is a fascinating primitive, because profiles can 260 00:18:13,910 --> 00:18:18,950 follow each other, meaning that you can form relationships on 261 00:18:18,950 --> 00:18:22,480 chain, meaning that. You can actually create an 262 00:18:22,480 --> 00:18:25,880 audience and once you have that audience, you can add 263 00:18:25,960 --> 00:18:29,200 programmability. So for example, let's say we 264 00:18:29,200 --> 00:18:32,280 have a user that has 1000 followers. 265 00:18:33,240 --> 00:18:37,560 So you can actually share content and amplify content to 266 00:18:37,560 --> 00:18:41,720 your own user base and you can monetize that amplification as 267 00:18:41,720 --> 00:18:45,320 well. So a creator for example, can 268 00:18:46,200 --> 00:18:49,480 share content of favorite brands and also get automatically 269 00:18:49,480 --> 00:18:52,980 monetized. So I would say that's one of the 270 00:18:52,980 --> 00:18:58,180 key event like I would not even say a primitive but maybe like a 271 00:18:58,380 --> 00:19:02,260 wider building function is that you you have with web St. 272 00:19:02,260 --> 00:19:06,900 programmability but also the the building monetization as well. 273 00:19:07,660 --> 00:19:11,820 And then there is more that three native kind of primitives 274 00:19:11,820 --> 00:19:14,180 like collect. So if you want to add a collect 275 00:19:14,180 --> 00:19:19,100 button into your blog post or you want to make your piece of 276 00:19:19,100 --> 00:19:21,940 content. Whether that's music or audio or 277 00:19:22,220 --> 00:19:26,860 video, a tokenized asset and make it memorable and 278 00:19:27,020 --> 00:19:29,900 collectible. You can still do that as well. 279 00:19:30,420 --> 00:19:35,220 And with V2 obviously there's plenty of features, but the idea 280 00:19:35,220 --> 00:19:40,140 of open actions it basically opens up to create any kind of a 281 00:19:40,140 --> 00:19:44,700 primitive to work with. Lens protocol, so you could 282 00:19:44,700 --> 00:19:49,420 create a post that appears in your followers feed. 283 00:19:50,040 --> 00:19:54,720 And it describes a a Dow for example, you recently joined and 284 00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:57,480 you can ask other people to join the same Dow and instead of 285 00:19:57,880 --> 00:20:02,160 seeing a like button or a collect button, you might see a 286 00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:06,520 join Dow button instead. That happens completely on chain 287 00:20:06,880 --> 00:20:09,240 so. So basically what's fascinating 288 00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:12,680 here is that these primitives they don't need to work in silo, 289 00:20:13,040 --> 00:20:16,160 but they can actually work together with other protocols 290 00:20:16,160 --> 00:20:19,400 and primitives that are already built and designed in. 291 00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:24,160 In web tree on the same network or cross chain with oracles? 292 00:20:25,960 --> 00:20:30,880 Is feed generation something that you think of a primitive? 293 00:20:31,200 --> 00:20:34,480 So basically when I think of Twitter, which is kind of the 294 00:20:34,480 --> 00:20:38,440 main social network that I use, you kind of you have two views 295 00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:41,200 to kind of see your feed right for you. 296 00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:46,080 So basically where it's kind of somehow where posts are somehow. 297 00:20:46,480 --> 00:20:48,200 Prioritize, but you don't know how. 298 00:20:48,200 --> 00:20:50,440 And then basically the thing that just shows you everything 299 00:20:50,440 --> 00:20:52,160 in order and both of them are kind of crappy. 300 00:20:52,360 --> 00:20:56,800 So kind of I think at least for me, I would actually be willing 301 00:20:56,800 --> 00:21:02,880 to kind of pay for more diversity in feed generation. 302 00:21:02,880 --> 00:21:06,960 Is this something that could be implemented on top of Lens? 303 00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:09,760 Yeah. So obviously this is something 304 00:21:09,760 --> 00:21:14,200 that's the can be solved on the application level or services 305 00:21:14,200 --> 00:21:17,630 layer. There's one application that is, 306 00:21:18,590 --> 00:21:23,230 it's an open source front end for the Lens protocol, which is 307 00:21:23,630 --> 00:21:27,510 lenser. It's built in a hackathon in two 308 00:21:27,510 --> 00:21:31,230 weeks, but progressively has become kind of a place to see 309 00:21:31,630 --> 00:21:35,310 integrations between lens and other web trip primitives. 310 00:21:36,230 --> 00:21:40,270 And something interesting is that there's a company called 311 00:21:40,270 --> 00:21:44,950 Karma Tree Labs and they're actually doing algorithms and 312 00:21:44,950 --> 00:21:48,710 those algorithms are available on on the Lenser feed. 313 00:21:48,870 --> 00:21:52,030 And I'm pretty sure all the other applications, they're 314 00:21:52,510 --> 00:21:55,350 implementing their own algorithms where you will start 315 00:21:55,350 --> 00:21:59,390 seeing actually service providers coming and building 316 00:21:59,390 --> 00:22:03,630 those algorithms similar to to to the Karma Tree Labs. 317 00:22:04,230 --> 00:22:07,830 And what is fascinating is that you can just select an algorithm 318 00:22:08,270 --> 00:22:11,870 and basically based on that you will see the content. 319 00:22:11,870 --> 00:22:17,510 So what is mind blowing here is that normally as an Internet 320 00:22:17,510 --> 00:22:21,230 user, you know you're always forced into some particular 321 00:22:21,230 --> 00:22:24,870 experience. And this is also related not to 322 00:22:25,030 --> 00:22:28,590 social media, but pretty much anything that is on Internet. 323 00:22:29,630 --> 00:22:33,350 And obviously if I changed that a bit because you can move your 324 00:22:33,350 --> 00:22:36,870 liquidity easily, exchange your experience to something else, 325 00:22:37,210 --> 00:22:40,530 but when it comes to social, being able to actually use third 326 00:22:40,530 --> 00:22:45,330 party algorithms seems kind of a cool idea and gives the user 327 00:22:45,330 --> 00:22:47,850 choice. So in some ways I think even 328 00:22:47,850 --> 00:22:53,330 those algorithms are in some ways primitives or some sort of 329 00:22:53,330 --> 00:22:57,970 components that are built on top that could be reusable as well 330 00:22:58,010 --> 00:23:02,810 or they can be even private. But the biggest difference here 331 00:23:02,810 --> 00:23:08,150 is that because the way Lens is built, the user has the choice. 332 00:23:08,150 --> 00:23:13,030 So you can make that availability for user to choose 333 00:23:13,030 --> 00:23:16,870 what algorithms you want to use and if that experience isn't 334 00:23:16,870 --> 00:23:20,030 satisfying, the user can go to another application where there 335 00:23:20,030 --> 00:23:25,230 is that more better experience. So we've kind of talked about 336 00:23:25,230 --> 00:23:30,190 things that should be on chain. I am sure there's many parts 337 00:23:30,190 --> 00:23:33,070 that are kind of by default off chain. 338 00:23:33,790 --> 00:23:35,190 Can you talk about those and how? 339 00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:40,160 Data handled, I think that's what we have one kind of like a 340 00:23:40,160 --> 00:23:43,960 layer between on chain. So just to give an example how 341 00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:49,120 the on chain part works is that you can transact on chain. 342 00:23:49,120 --> 00:23:55,160 So you can collect for example content as an FTS that will be a 343 00:23:55,160 --> 00:23:58,800 on chain transaction, but the actual content is reflected to a 344 00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:02,520 decentralized storage or the data availability layer like RBF 345 00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:05,300 or IPFS. And then if you don't want to do 346 00:24:05,300 --> 00:24:07,820 that on chain transaction, which is most of the cases. 347 00:24:07,820 --> 00:24:11,860 So if you have a funny comment that you want to add to a pause 348 00:24:13,020 --> 00:24:17,980 but you don't see the value of actually tokenizing that and 349 00:24:17,980 --> 00:24:21,740 make it more memorable, you could actually use a service we 350 00:24:21,740 --> 00:24:26,860 created which is called Momoka. So Momoka basically allows to 351 00:24:26,860 --> 00:24:30,660 take content and create it and submit it into data availability 352 00:24:30,660 --> 00:24:33,650 layers. And what it means is that when 353 00:24:33,650 --> 00:24:36,810 we think about blockchain the way it's built today, it has 354 00:24:37,210 --> 00:24:41,610 execution, it has a state and data availability. 355 00:24:42,250 --> 00:24:46,570 And what's in some cases you need for content is only the 356 00:24:46,570 --> 00:24:49,010 data availability, but you don't need necessarily like the 357 00:24:49,170 --> 00:24:51,570 execution part. So you just want to ensure that 358 00:24:51,570 --> 00:24:56,330 the content is stored as an Internet artifact for a longer 359 00:24:56,330 --> 00:24:58,780 period of time. It's something we don't think 360 00:24:58,780 --> 00:25:02,900 about often, but like let's say if a popular blogging platform 361 00:25:02,900 --> 00:25:06,340 goes down today, what happens to all the artifacts that we all 362 00:25:06,340 --> 00:25:09,460 created that are very important today for us. 363 00:25:10,100 --> 00:25:12,740 So you can use data availability, transactions and 364 00:25:12,740 --> 00:25:16,100 then the off chain piece usually is something that is built on an 365 00:25:16,100 --> 00:25:19,740 application level layer. So currently there are likes, 366 00:25:19,940 --> 00:25:26,020 but you can build for example privacy, private posts and all 367 00:25:26,020 --> 00:25:28,260 the things that you actually don't need on chaining 368 00:25:28,260 --> 00:25:32,340 infrastructure and the provability and that 369 00:25:32,340 --> 00:25:36,340 verification that it brings. And it really depends on the use 370 00:25:36,340 --> 00:25:41,140 case what we talked earlier. So if you're building a 371 00:25:41,500 --> 00:25:45,140 publication application, maybe you use some of these primitives 372 00:25:45,140 --> 00:25:47,780 like let's say profiles, handles. 373 00:25:48,860 --> 00:25:52,450 Then you're using normal transactions to store the 374 00:25:52,450 --> 00:25:54,850 content. Maybe you add a collect button 375 00:25:54,850 --> 00:25:59,530 as well to later being able to bring that content on chain as 376 00:25:59,530 --> 00:26:02,410 well if you want the users to do so. 377 00:26:02,690 --> 00:26:06,610 But it really depends on the exact use case and that's why 378 00:26:07,170 --> 00:26:10,490 building up three social is very different from anything else 379 00:26:10,770 --> 00:26:13,610 I've built before, because you really have to bring that 380 00:26:13,730 --> 00:26:19,210 optionality for the builders and they essentially choose from 381 00:26:19,450 --> 00:26:24,050 what they actually want to use to succeed in their use case. 382 00:26:24,050 --> 00:26:30,610 What I'm curious about in technical architecture is, is 383 00:26:30,610 --> 00:26:36,410 there a tragedy of the Commons problem in Web 3 social? 384 00:26:36,810 --> 00:26:39,010 What I mean is like what I mean is this. 385 00:26:39,850 --> 00:26:44,050 So we have like some, let's say we have some primitives and some 386 00:26:44,050 --> 00:26:47,240 kind of social graph on a blockchain and then there is a 387 00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:51,360 data availability solution which I think in Nance's case is at 388 00:26:51,360 --> 00:26:57,760 head three where I think the data can be published and anyone 389 00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:03,440 can come and build a user interface to all of this data. 390 00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:08,200 And as Figurika mentioned, have basically their own curation 391 00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:13,840 algorithms decide what to show to a user and attract users and 392 00:27:14,590 --> 00:27:19,030 is a competition between user interfaces to attract users and 393 00:27:19,550 --> 00:27:22,990 hopefully that goes in a direction where more users are 394 00:27:22,990 --> 00:27:26,350 satisfied. When I imagine this interaction 395 00:27:26,350 --> 00:27:30,590 as a builder of a UI, let's say like, OK, I start a company with 396 00:27:31,310 --> 00:27:34,750 two Co founders, we're going to build a UI on top of network 397 00:27:34,750 --> 00:27:37,350 call. I imagine myself in the 398 00:27:37,350 --> 00:27:42,430 beginning building like good curation, good algorithms to 399 00:27:42,430 --> 00:27:47,050 filter data well. But as soon as kind of like the 400 00:27:47,090 --> 00:27:51,970 first level succeeds, my incentive is to have some 401 00:27:51,970 --> 00:27:55,290 feature in which there is lock in for the users. 402 00:27:55,290 --> 00:27:58,250 For example, if the users want to do a direct message to each 403 00:27:58,250 --> 00:28:02,610 other and that direct messaging system may not naturally fit a 404 00:28:02,610 --> 00:28:08,050 blockchain, my incentive is to build like a private data 405 00:28:08,050 --> 00:28:15,050 messaging private TM layer in my user interface and have users 406 00:28:15,050 --> 00:28:20,170 message each other in my private DM system so that those users 407 00:28:20,170 --> 00:28:25,170 damn get locked in into my my user interface as opposed to 408 00:28:25,170 --> 00:28:29,570 other people's user interfaces. So in a sense, my selfish 409 00:28:29,570 --> 00:28:33,730 incentive is to break interoperability, ship that 410 00:28:33,730 --> 00:28:39,250 incremental feature which is not shared or the public graph, 411 00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:44,200 because it is by having that extra intimate private feature 412 00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:48,440 that I lock users onto my user interface and develop a business 413 00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:50,800 model by, I don't know, selling attention or something like 414 00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:55,640 that. And so in a sense and if you 415 00:28:55,640 --> 00:29:00,680 imagine me as one developer and there are 10 developers, if the 416 00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:05,240 race to the incentive race behaves like that, then actually 417 00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:11,160 none of us in the end are incentivize to build the public 418 00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:16,480 good which is like this public data lake of of social data. 419 00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:19,680 So anyone other analogy you can take off it is there's this 420 00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:23,880 famous goat herd pasture or tragedy of the Commons problem 421 00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:28,960 which is I have my set of goats other people and other quote 422 00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:31,520 herd as a set of goats. Maybe there's ten of us. 423 00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:37,030 There's public pasture where the goats can go and graze, but we 424 00:29:37,030 --> 00:29:40,990 want to do limited grazing on the public pasture, because if 425 00:29:40,990 --> 00:29:44,990 you do too much grazing that the grass dies out, the pasture 426 00:29:44,990 --> 00:29:49,270 becomes useless. But my selfish incentive is to 427 00:29:49,270 --> 00:29:53,150 graze as much as possible because sort of that's my 428 00:29:53,150 --> 00:29:56,710 optimal strategy. And when everybody follows their 429 00:29:56,710 --> 00:30:00,230 optimal strategy, well, nobody maintains the public pasture. 430 00:30:01,190 --> 00:30:04,350 So do you think there's a problem like that for for social 431 00:30:04,350 --> 00:30:09,550 media where the UI bin does incentives it always go towards 432 00:30:09,550 --> 00:30:14,110 these private features and your data link will in the end end 433 00:30:14,110 --> 00:30:17,950 becoming a weak data. I love that you're already 434 00:30:17,950 --> 00:30:25,190 thinking of building something or less with the but I do think 435 00:30:25,190 --> 00:30:30,670 that's it's a very very fascinating topic to to to think 436 00:30:30,670 --> 00:30:35,080 about because it really isn't only like kind of like talking 437 00:30:35,080 --> 00:30:39,720 point on the pre social because well obviously I I I think that 438 00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:44,360 end of the day it it's really depends on what kind of network 439 00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:48,360 effects there exists right. So, so effectively for new 440 00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:53,160 application builders, they might want to go with a let's say 441 00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:58,600 public shared social graph and and get the value out of there 442 00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:02,760 and then build a delta on top. Because I present think that the 443 00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:07,280 aspect of this centralization should exist where you create 444 00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:11,960 guarantees for the users or for the developers on some sort of 445 00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:15,240 objective. So for example, like I will be 446 00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:19,040 very fine if this protocol is decentralized, but let's say 447 00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:24,680 there's maybe five of API services that are making sense 448 00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:29,690 of all the data and brings to the users or applications. 449 00:31:29,690 --> 00:31:32,130 As long as there is that end point where you can always 450 00:31:32,130 --> 00:31:38,890 revert that, hey you know, I own my profile and you know we have 451 00:31:38,970 --> 00:31:41,010 a risk of the system not working. 452 00:31:41,370 --> 00:31:45,730 And that's kind of like a removal of the root key is where 453 00:31:45,730 --> 00:31:49,650 the decentralization comes in. And for when you think about 454 00:31:49,650 --> 00:31:55,010 like new builders for some might actually be that they want their 455 00:31:55,010 --> 00:31:58,390 own graph. So they look at the the kind of 456 00:31:58,390 --> 00:32:01,710 like a public graph and try to make sense of it and and think 457 00:32:01,710 --> 00:32:04,550 that this is good. But what we are aiming for, we 458 00:32:04,550 --> 00:32:06,710 want to do it in a different way. 459 00:32:06,750 --> 00:32:10,510 We want to create completely separate graph for example and 460 00:32:10,510 --> 00:32:15,870 maybe not making it shareable. And that's fine, because I do 461 00:32:15,870 --> 00:32:21,390 think there should be a public good layer that exists and then 462 00:32:21,590 --> 00:32:22,830 there should be incentive for that. 463 00:32:22,830 --> 00:32:25,780 But there's also should be incentives to building given 464 00:32:25,940 --> 00:32:29,100 layers that might be more private, but they have to use 465 00:32:29,100 --> 00:32:33,780 case as long as there's that functional public good layer 466 00:32:33,780 --> 00:32:38,100 that works. So the same question comes in 467 00:32:38,180 --> 00:32:43,340 also in regarding let's say Ethyrium, why people choose to 468 00:32:43,340 --> 00:32:47,220 build on Ethyrium today, for example, why they don't just go 469 00:32:48,180 --> 00:32:51,900 and build on a completely new network that empowers on their 470 00:32:51,900 --> 00:32:54,920 users. And a more simple argument now 471 00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:58,920 is that you know you can always build your layer 2 where we saw 472 00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:02,000 recently with make it out for example, looking at Solana's 473 00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:07,080 code base and thinking of using that to to build their own 474 00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:11,840 network and and and and there's a question like okay, why like 475 00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:14,280 we have kind of like a similar challenge. 476 00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:18,200 And then Lido is another example where you know there's a 477 00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:23,210 discussions where there's discussions of thinking of how 478 00:33:23,210 --> 00:33:26,970 these validators staking for validators could actually self 479 00:33:26,970 --> 00:33:31,410 limit themselves. And I think these limitations 480 00:33:33,290 --> 00:33:39,330 really isn't servicing because I I think that if a centralization 481 00:33:39,930 --> 00:33:45,210 is a challenge, we have to innovate in a way where there's 482 00:33:45,210 --> 00:33:47,410 enough competition to to to build towards. 483 00:33:47,730 --> 00:33:50,130 In other words, for example, when we go back to the question 484 00:33:50,130 --> 00:33:56,480 of a shared social graph, the value there is obviously the 485 00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:59,600 data, what you could do with the data and the user base. 486 00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:04,040 So this is the reason why, for example, a new developer wants 487 00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:08,239 to build on let's say Ethereum even if the gas cost is a bit 488 00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:12,639 higher because let's say there's certain amount of users, a 489 00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:16,820 network effect based on those users, we can quantify what are 490 00:34:16,820 --> 00:34:20,659 their data, So what kind of holdings they are, what kind of 491 00:34:20,659 --> 00:34:23,580 behavior and that creates network effects. 492 00:34:24,020 --> 00:34:28,380 So in some ways I think what might happen regardless of 493 00:34:28,420 --> 00:34:34,780 flight plans and regarding event like Ethereum and similar 494 00:34:34,780 --> 00:34:39,060 situations is that you will see traction of people coming and 495 00:34:39,060 --> 00:34:42,790 building on the same draft and that just empowers the draft and 496 00:34:42,790 --> 00:34:46,469 and obviously makes it better. So there's there's incentives as 497 00:34:46,469 --> 00:34:50,949 long as the draft draws, but there's also incentives to to 498 00:34:50,949 --> 00:34:56,150 build something separate and less shareable as well. 499 00:34:56,590 --> 00:34:59,110 And they might have those two different use cases. 500 00:34:59,670 --> 00:35:03,430 And I do believe for example like a public draft shareable 501 00:35:03,470 --> 00:35:06,280 works pretty well when you're building applications are all 502 00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,480 kind of like a public town squares where you can use that 503 00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:13,840 public data, public discussions. You want to have data 504 00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:16,000 availability there. But then you might want to 505 00:35:16,240 --> 00:35:21,000 create an application that is some sort of members club, I 506 00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:24,520 don't know for people who have kids, you know and you have some 507 00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:27,400 sort of verification process there and you know you want to 508 00:35:28,240 --> 00:35:32,040 build on a separate drive. So that's possible to. 509 00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:36,640 So I think that problem exists everywhere, but I think 510 00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:41,360 something that's really is tied to that is that like liquidity 511 00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:44,120 in the data or whatever data is like what it did. 512 00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:47,080 But basically that's why that's the reason why for some people 513 00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:52,120 choose to build a lens or build an overall build on Ethereum as 514 00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:56,240 well when gas was might be cheaper somewhere else. 515 00:35:56,240 --> 00:35:59,840 So I do think the problem exists everywhere and it's some sort of 516 00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:04,530 balancing aspect of of incentives that actually get 517 00:36:04,530 --> 00:36:09,050 people to build. I hope that's an answer that 518 00:36:09,050 --> 00:36:11,250 makes sense. Yeah, yeah, definitely. 519 00:36:11,730 --> 00:36:15,450 So I'm actually curious what the technical architecture looks 520 00:36:15,450 --> 00:36:22,530 like for these kind of public goods parts of the lens 521 00:36:22,530 --> 00:36:25,050 protocol. And then the extension of the 522 00:36:25,050 --> 00:36:29,210 question would be OK if I wanted to build sort of a private good, 523 00:36:29,210 --> 00:36:34,790 which is a private DM or a group group chat, private group chat, 524 00:36:34,790 --> 00:36:37,110 how would people build on top of it? 525 00:36:37,230 --> 00:36:40,670 What what's the tech portal and technical architecture of the 526 00:36:40,670 --> 00:36:44,350 lens system? Yeah, I mean the the protocol 527 00:36:44,350 --> 00:36:47,470 itself is is public good. So basically you will decide, 528 00:36:48,110 --> 00:36:51,670 you will decide what elements you want to use from lens. 529 00:36:51,990 --> 00:36:55,550 So for example, maybe the only thing you care about is handles 530 00:36:55,550 --> 00:36:59,990 and profiles and then you basically build a database on 531 00:36:59,990 --> 00:37:04,260 top for private messages and then you have encryption as 532 00:37:04,260 --> 00:37:06,380 well. And that's actually good example 533 00:37:06,380 --> 00:37:11,300 of a good web free social application because web free 534 00:37:11,300 --> 00:37:15,180 social, it doesn't need to be web free social from head to the 535 00:37:15,180 --> 00:37:18,860 toes. I mean in terms of like every 536 00:37:18,860 --> 00:37:21,060 single thing we have to solve with some sort of 537 00:37:22,180 --> 00:37:25,980 decentralization aspect because decentralization comes with a 538 00:37:26,220 --> 00:37:28,700 cost. And where there's cost, there 539 00:37:28,700 --> 00:37:31,540 has to be some sort of other incentive value to do that. 540 00:37:31,980 --> 00:37:36,220 Handles make sense because we can trade handles, profiles as 541 00:37:36,220 --> 00:37:39,300 well because you can secure an audience, maybe some of them 542 00:37:39,300 --> 00:37:45,100 become brands and they can be also tradable and you can also 543 00:37:46,540 --> 00:37:50,420 share revenue, split revenue between different applications 544 00:37:50,860 --> 00:37:54,700 between different users as well. So I think like we will see in 545 00:37:54,700 --> 00:38:00,300 the future very simple technical products built on Lens or with 546 00:38:00,300 --> 00:38:03,720 Lens where you use maybe like one or two primitives. 547 00:38:03,720 --> 00:38:08,360 You even use a Lens SDK so you don't interact with the much of 548 00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:11,880 of actually smart contract code base but through an SDK. 549 00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:16,440 And then you add the things that you don't need the the part and 550 00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:18,520 and the experience and and that's about it. 551 00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:22,520 I I think it's fascinating because in most of the 552 00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:24,760 interesting things that you can do with social media 553 00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:27,080 applications, you have to do it very fast. 554 00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:30,470 So you want to build something in a month or two and whatever 555 00:38:30,470 --> 00:38:32,470 you build necessarily won't last long. 556 00:38:32,470 --> 00:38:35,430 So we probably will see applications getting a lot of 557 00:38:36,030 --> 00:38:40,510 lot of user acquisition, but then you have very low retention 558 00:38:40,670 --> 00:38:43,190 and I think that's okay. I mean a social application 559 00:38:43,190 --> 00:38:47,150 might become like something compared compared to seeing 560 00:38:47,630 --> 00:38:51,070 let's say movies or other type of content where you know you do 561 00:38:51,070 --> 00:38:54,390 it once or twice or maybe three times and that's it. 562 00:38:54,670 --> 00:38:57,950 And we've seen this also outside of that tree social. 563 00:38:57,950 --> 00:39:02,950 So for example Threads achieves 100 million sign up sign ups 564 00:39:02,950 --> 00:39:06,870 very quickly because they did it on a shared network within their 565 00:39:06,950 --> 00:39:12,590 own platform and went down to 10 to 8 million and and still is 566 00:39:12,670 --> 00:39:14,990 decreasing. So we do see this kind of like a 567 00:39:15,710 --> 00:39:18,910 a challenge and it's just a new way of building I think in in 568 00:39:18,910 --> 00:39:23,910 this space and and maybe that 8 or 10 application that you build 569 00:39:23,910 --> 00:39:28,510 an experience that might have a better retention curve and 570 00:39:28,510 --> 00:39:31,310 actually starts having more stickiness. 571 00:39:31,710 --> 00:39:36,830 But if Lens can make that process 10 times easier and and 572 00:39:36,830 --> 00:39:40,190 reactivating already users that are on board and their friends, 573 00:39:40,590 --> 00:39:43,430 I think then we're in a very nice path. 574 00:39:45,350 --> 00:39:47,910 How many people have profiles on Lens today? 575 00:39:48,830 --> 00:39:54,470 Yes, 120,000 profiles. It's really not a big KPI for us 576 00:39:54,470 --> 00:39:59,570 because the access is still in beta, So anyone who wants a 577 00:39:59,570 --> 00:40:06,290 profile, you know, you can shoot me, shoot me a DM for example, 578 00:40:06,290 --> 00:40:09,650 where Twitter and I can let you in, especially if you're looking 579 00:40:09,650 --> 00:40:12,490 to build something. And then down the line, I think 580 00:40:13,090 --> 00:40:18,490 profiles is essentially the best way to measure even when we're 581 00:40:18,970 --> 00:40:22,290 in a permission state because the actual. 582 00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:26,120 The actual usage depends on the use cases. 583 00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:28,520 So I think it goes to the application level. 584 00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:33,200 I think we will measure more of some sort of a monetization and 585 00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:37,560 how it empowers the the, the, the actual developers as well 586 00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:40,640 and maybe even the users. I think that might be our 587 00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:43,320 approach. So we still aren't working with 588 00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:47,480 the ideas of like what we actually should follow because 589 00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:50,500 it's very early. Yeah, absolutely. 590 00:40:50,660 --> 00:40:53,700 So, I mean, one of the reasons why you're in beta and you kind 591 00:40:53,700 --> 00:40:58,820 of need an invite to join is that your costs per active user 592 00:40:59,140 --> 00:41:01,540 are actually pretty high. I read somewhere that it's 593 00:41:01,540 --> 00:41:04,020 around 400 U.S. dollars per year. 594 00:41:04,140 --> 00:41:06,460 And I think kind of the monetization that we scattered 595 00:41:06,460 --> 00:41:09,220 like a couple of Times Now, that's kind of one of the parts 596 00:41:09,220 --> 00:41:13,060 that can address that. So how do you see this develop 597 00:41:13,340 --> 00:41:16,580 in the future? They did. 598 00:41:16,580 --> 00:41:19,340 So the interesting way is that users always when they interact 599 00:41:19,340 --> 00:41:22,540 with the box and obviously there is gas fees if the network is on 600 00:41:22,540 --> 00:41:26,140 layer twos or let's say something like Polygon, those 601 00:41:26,140 --> 00:41:30,100 costs are much lower. And the way we actually did the 602 00:41:30,100 --> 00:41:34,900 use, the way we built the experience across all the Lens 603 00:41:34,900 --> 00:41:38,180 ecosystem is that as a user you don't really sign for 604 00:41:38,180 --> 00:41:41,460 transactions and you don't pay for transactions. 605 00:41:41,460 --> 00:41:44,990 So they're sponsored transactions on a layer 2, for 606 00:41:44,990 --> 00:41:47,990 example. The costs are much lower. 607 00:41:48,190 --> 00:41:51,310 So you could put them as a as a developer, you basically put 608 00:41:51,310 --> 00:41:56,390 those costs into something like your operation cost of like a WS 609 00:41:56,390 --> 00:41:59,590 and and whatnot. But more recently, a few months 610 00:41:59,590 --> 00:42:03,430 ago when we released Momocca, basically being able to do data 611 00:42:03,430 --> 00:42:09,630 availability transactions, I think we hit in total 640,000 612 00:42:09,630 --> 00:42:16,410 transactions with the total cost of $200 for all those 613 00:42:16,410 --> 00:42:19,330 transactions. So what it means is that instead 614 00:42:19,330 --> 00:42:24,970 of doing an on chain comment or even of an on chain post, we 615 00:42:24,970 --> 00:42:29,050 simply submit those transactions into data availability layer. 616 00:42:29,650 --> 00:42:33,610 And why this is radically innovative is that basically 617 00:42:33,610 --> 00:42:37,570 when you do social media interactions, you don't really 618 00:42:37,570 --> 00:42:43,020 need in most cases execution state and together with the data 619 00:42:43,020 --> 00:42:47,380 availability and you can reduce your cost significantly. 620 00:42:47,780 --> 00:42:51,780 So the user costs kind of are in the level where the applications 621 00:42:51,780 --> 00:42:56,620 can even start sponsoring as long as they cover those costs 622 00:42:56,620 --> 00:43:02,020 somehow or they figure a way of either sponsoring or baking into 623 00:43:02,020 --> 00:43:06,100 their fees when someone wants to make the make the content on 624 00:43:06,100 --> 00:43:08,590 chain. So that's a kind of like a big 625 00:43:09,350 --> 00:43:14,390 improvement there in terms of the cost associated. 626 00:43:14,390 --> 00:43:18,310 And this is mainly because also social media data comes in 627 00:43:18,310 --> 00:43:20,790 bulks. And what I mean that is that the 628 00:43:20,790 --> 00:43:24,670 way the blockchain works is that you have a block time, a certain 629 00:43:24,670 --> 00:43:28,950 amount of space, you can fill a block and when it comes social 630 00:43:29,270 --> 00:43:34,990 media execution, your data is bigger than those blocks. 631 00:43:34,990 --> 00:43:39,550 So this is really like you can't really feed a blockchain in a 632 00:43:39,550 --> 00:43:42,630 way it works, but you want to use it, for example when you 633 00:43:42,630 --> 00:43:46,590 start creating handles and profiles and securing a follow 634 00:43:46,590 --> 00:43:50,150 graph for example. So it's more about the design 635 00:43:50,150 --> 00:43:54,390 choices we've made to create an architecture where these costs 636 00:43:54,390 --> 00:43:57,710 are mitigated and you still have the features you need for the 637 00:43:57,710 --> 00:44:01,950 right primitives and then the use cases. 638 00:44:03,430 --> 00:44:05,870 So what would be the updated cost? 639 00:44:05,870 --> 00:44:12,030 So basically, if 400 was the cost before Momoca, what's the 640 00:44:12,030 --> 00:44:17,470 cost per user now? So basically it's 0.0003 cents 641 00:44:17,470 --> 00:44:20,190 per transaction. So it's quite compared to 642 00:44:20,190 --> 00:44:23,180 something like AWS pretty much. Okay. 643 00:44:23,180 --> 00:44:25,700 Yeah, that's, I mean that's basically negligible. 644 00:44:25,900 --> 00:44:30,420 So why haven't you opened it up to the wider public? 645 00:44:30,580 --> 00:44:33,780 I was always at the end of the impression that kind of the cost 646 00:44:35,140 --> 00:44:40,300 is the largest reason here. Cost isn't largest for us now. 647 00:44:40,300 --> 00:44:45,460 We are currently focusing on shipping the version 2 which is 648 00:44:45,460 --> 00:44:49,380 already going to dev net and what it means is that you can 649 00:44:49,380 --> 00:44:53,400 start integrating lens V2 already into existing 650 00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:57,600 applications and start testing out and then obviously the main 651 00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:01,080 net will follow once things are looking good on that side. 652 00:45:02,240 --> 00:45:05,720 So maybe then I mean we can open up I think. 653 00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:10,400 Cool. So there's one more topic that 654 00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:12,600 I'd kind of like to cover, and that's governance. 655 00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:17,240 You already kind of talked about the lens improvement proposals. 656 00:45:18,340 --> 00:45:22,180 A bit ago and I think this also addresses like part of Maher's 657 00:45:22,180 --> 00:45:25,460 question about kind of even Maher creating this kind of lock 658 00:45:25,460 --> 00:45:31,460 in application on top of lens. I mean it's pretty clear that as 659 00:45:31,660 --> 00:45:35,620 a protocol you need to be agile enough to kind of react to 660 00:45:35,620 --> 00:45:38,620 threats like that. So obviously kind of you need 661 00:45:38,620 --> 00:45:42,860 some sort of upgradability. How does, how does governance 662 00:45:42,860 --> 00:45:44,220 work then? Yeah. 663 00:45:44,460 --> 00:45:48,780 Currently the governance is basically more of self 664 00:45:48,780 --> 00:45:53,700 governance where you have builders coming and raising for 665 00:45:53,700 --> 00:45:57,580 example, ideas that maybe this particular way could be done and 666 00:45:57,580 --> 00:46:00,060 differently or even from our team. 667 00:46:00,060 --> 00:46:03,940 So maybe we realized that something needs to be changed, a 668 00:46:03,940 --> 00:46:07,380 very recent improvement parts for example that we noticed that 669 00:46:08,420 --> 00:46:13,040 over social media there's a lot of phishing attempts and 670 00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:17,360 actually there's increased amount of phishing cases where 671 00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:22,480 the users are clicking some sort of a link give away and they 672 00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:26,800 signed a permit transaction. And what happens is that their 673 00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:32,280 Nfds are moving out and this is basically the whole kind of like 674 00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:36,680 a web tree user base that that is affected. 675 00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:41,810 It's not less related, but what we notice is that to mitigate 676 00:46:41,810 --> 00:46:43,890 this issue we wanted to create a profile. 677 00:46:43,890 --> 00:46:48,770 Guardian means that the profiles are non transferable until you 678 00:46:48,770 --> 00:46:52,930 unlock this profile guardian. And what it actually allowed to 679 00:46:52,930 --> 00:46:58,490 do is that we saw a case where one user actually was a victim 680 00:46:58,490 --> 00:47:03,570 of a phishing attempt but the profile guardian saved that lens 681 00:47:03,570 --> 00:47:07,050 profile but all the other Nfds were gone. 682 00:47:07,510 --> 00:47:09,390 So it's an interesting innovation to be basically fit 683 00:47:09,390 --> 00:47:12,270 and we we proposed to the community and there was a 684 00:47:12,270 --> 00:47:15,910 discussion about you know how it's going to affect and and 685 00:47:15,910 --> 00:47:19,230 then it was voted in. But down the line what's 686 00:47:19,550 --> 00:47:23,350 important is that as the protocol gets so-called, like 687 00:47:23,350 --> 00:47:25,750 protocol markets fit. So we're still talking about a 688 00:47:25,750 --> 00:47:28,590 protocol that is zero to 1. So it's not Ave. 689 00:47:28,750 --> 00:47:33,230 Ave. protocol, you know it it has its market share and that's 690 00:47:33,230 --> 00:47:36,060 a different story. But once there's enough actually 691 00:47:36,060 --> 00:47:41,260 traction and it becomes important for developers to see 692 00:47:41,380 --> 00:47:47,140 it being updated constantly and it has traction that's where it 693 00:47:47,140 --> 00:47:49,660 kind of like the the progressive governance kicking. 694 00:47:49,660 --> 00:47:53,420 So what will be the next step to decentralized the governance and 695 00:47:53,420 --> 00:47:55,660 what with the step and how it involved the community? 696 00:47:55,980 --> 00:47:59,700 And based on my experience with Alba, it's it's quite lengthy 697 00:48:00,060 --> 00:48:04,000 process for sure. How do you see the current 698 00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:09,920 decentralized social ecosystem? So I mean we saw friend tech 699 00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:14,680 emerge like 2 weeks ago or so and kind of quickly find its 700 00:48:14,680 --> 00:48:19,840 place somewhere then we have far caster master mastered on and so 701 00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:21,800 on. How do you view that space? 702 00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:26,900 I do think like all these initiatives, apps and protocols, 703 00:48:26,900 --> 00:48:29,820 they don't really have yet a product market fit. 704 00:48:29,940 --> 00:48:32,540 But I do think all these teams are working hard to get 705 00:48:32,540 --> 00:48:35,580 something. Some are more protocols like 706 00:48:35,700 --> 00:48:38,980 excellence protocol that you can build those experiences, some 707 00:48:38,980 --> 00:48:42,780 are more of those end user experiences. 708 00:48:42,780 --> 00:48:48,220 So and you can see even in the social media applications that 709 00:48:48,220 --> 00:48:51,820 are have integrated lens like Orb or butterfly, they're 710 00:48:51,820 --> 00:48:55,470 constantly coming with with new features and trying to kind of 711 00:48:55,470 --> 00:49:01,150 like find what might be exciting for their existing users. 712 00:49:01,630 --> 00:49:06,110 I do think it's quite early and I think we aren't in a in a 713 00:49:06,550 --> 00:49:13,390 state yet where kind of like decentral social is has a good 714 00:49:13,790 --> 00:49:18,150 product market fit. But I do think we do have those 715 00:49:18,150 --> 00:49:20,870 ingredients there that we can test. 716 00:49:21,390 --> 00:49:24,940 And our goal is that we want to provide the flexibility for 717 00:49:24,940 --> 00:49:28,860 developers to actually try new things, create new primitives 718 00:49:29,260 --> 00:49:34,500 and see how that actually helps them to create, to get that 719 00:49:34,500 --> 00:49:38,380 product market fit. And also at the same time be a 720 00:49:38,380 --> 00:49:43,180 bit of bridge and get new users that are not for example, in the 721 00:49:43,220 --> 00:49:45,420 ecosystem yet. Because I think that's the 722 00:49:45,420 --> 00:49:48,700 bigger goal here. So if we're able to capture new 723 00:49:48,700 --> 00:49:53,930 users into web three to new social experiences, that will be 724 00:49:53,930 --> 00:49:56,810 amazing because you can come into the space without doing a 725 00:49:56,810 --> 00:50:01,770 financial transaction and that will be quite big paradigm shift 726 00:50:01,770 --> 00:50:04,330 for our space. Cool. 727 00:50:04,850 --> 00:50:06,570 Thank you so much for joining us, Danny. 728 00:50:06,970 --> 00:50:11,450 Where can people learn more about Lens and where do they 729 00:50:11,450 --> 00:50:14,450 shoot you a DM to kind of get an invite? 730 00:50:14,900 --> 00:50:17,980 Yeah you can. You can call lens dot XYZ and 731 00:50:18,020 --> 00:50:20,900 you can join the wait list that's that's the most fastest. 732 00:50:20,980 --> 00:50:23,500 You can also try and send me a DM in on Twitter. 733 00:50:24,500 --> 00:50:28,300 If you're already a Lens user you can follow me a standard up 734 00:50:28,300 --> 00:50:32,940 lens across all the applications that are integrated Lens. 735 00:50:34,180 --> 00:50:38,580 Yeah, and be excited to see this podcast also on Lens and and 736 00:50:38,580 --> 00:50:40,900 being able to comment there as well. 737 00:50:40,900 --> 00:50:42,740 And then my additional thoughts as well. 738 00:50:44,370 --> 00:50:46,730 Yeah, absolutely. I personally am on lens. 739 00:50:47,290 --> 00:50:51,490 It's my last name dot Lens, but I'm not very active yet, so 740 00:50:51,490 --> 00:50:55,250 we'll have to get better here. Thank you so much. 741 00:50:57,770 --> 00:50:59,490 Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. 742 00:50:59,890 --> 00:51:01,450 We release new episodes every week. 743 00:51:02,090 --> 00:51:04,850 You can find and subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, 744 00:51:04,890 --> 00:51:07,930 YouTube, SoundCloud, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 745 00:51:08,450 --> 00:51:11,170 And if you have a Google Home or Alexa device, you can tell it To 746 00:51:11,170 --> 00:51:14,130 listen to the latest episode of the Epicenter podcast, go to 747 00:51:14,130 --> 00:51:17,290 epicenter.tv, subscribe for a full list of places where you 748 00:51:17,290 --> 00:51:19,530 can watch and listen. And while you're there, be sure 749 00:51:19,530 --> 00:51:21,970 to sign up for the newsletter so you get new episodes in your 750 00:51:21,970 --> 00:51:25,090 inbox as they're released. If you want to interact with us 751 00:51:25,410 --> 00:51:27,810 guest or other podcast listeners, you can follow us on 752 00:51:27,810 --> 00:51:29,690 Twitter. And please leave us a review on 753 00:51:29,690 --> 00:51:31,250 iTunes. It helps people find the show 754 00:51:31,250 --> 00:51:32,610 and we're always happy to read them. 755 00:51:33,490 --> 00:51:36,010 So thanks so much and we look forward to being back next week. 756 00:51:41,970 --> 00:51:43,810 I want it.