The upcoming Lens Holiday Hackathon will be judged by the Lens community (+ devs) using @joke.
People will be voting for what they would like to see built in their network - and all will be decided onchain. Feels good. Join as a judge below, no dev experience required.<www.lens.xyz/news/lens-holiday-hackathon>
Idk if I'll have the time with work, but I'll try to build a social sleep hygiene/habit game. Something chill that would help look forward to sleep, build and stick to a sleeping routine. Hopefully I'll have some time 💤
Long post, mostly open ended questions, reflecting on what’s needed in the hackathon.
Why am I joining the @lenshackathon? Am I joining?
How do I even have time? I can't submit the app I just started building with @livepeer even though it's entirely @lens (plus Farcaster and Bluesky) focused. But I could do something with music video streaming since I’ll be working on that in the livepeer AI ComfyUI hacker program anyway. (Will see how much interest there is for it…)
Taking a step back, there's a more pressing question hanging in the air for all of us here.
What's wrong with social media that Lens and any other web3 social protocol or app experience hasn't hit a really satisfying or transformative solution for yet?
For me, it’s a kind of spillover community activation friction that comes back to: What's today's social media used for?
In no particular order, without sugarcoating it, here's how I see it:
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Trolls, rage, misinformation, scams, and bait. Which are exhausting, but reinforce the idea that only a few big companies or regulators can solve it
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Value extractive platform lock in. But that still sounds too abstract to most legacy DAUs to override their crypto cringe response
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The only hope for content monetization where you can at least imagine yourself going from 0 readers, viewers, listeners, subs, or followers to actually earning a living from your own creativity, charisma, effort, and media savvy
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A place to ease loneliness and friend to friend communication that doesn't feel so algorithmically manufactured or constantly transactional
There's real conflict and tension between those. Maybe they can't all be solved with more thoughtful communication design, better products, cryptographic proofs, and decentralized tech. Maybe they can.
Working on a Livepeer app recently and getting more active in that community, I've been asking the same kind of questions but around the root of "why video?". I think it applies to everything here too, though. "Why any content?", including the random thoughts we share here instead of in some long lost paper diary.
What's started to make sense of it for me is: "Whatever you watch (read, listen to, etc), you can see yourself doing. You become what you take in and react to." We become who we know, in not so trivial ways.
Maybe that's too rooted in an emotional design perspective. But what I can't help thinking about every time I see a post about @orb, other Lens apps, or what's needed for future activity, volume, and adoption, is going back more than a decade ago to when everything seemed simpler, and massive follower accounts were rare. What was it about Hype Machine, Turntable.fm, all the other apps-as-places so many of us obsessed over, that's missing from whatever the web is now? Can we even get it back? Can we do better?
I don't have the answers, and haven't seen them anywhere else yet. Maybe just asking the questions can help invite them?
We need more experimental apps here on @lens .
Wav3s was a very good experimental app that kept people coming back to Lens every now and then.
I will really love to see something like that again soonest.
I've got something cooking 👀
I just hope there's enough time to finish this. Basically only have next weekend left +evenings
In case you missed it: spun up a @lens hackathon @orb club! Brainstorm with others, share your Lens apps wishlist, discuss the judging process… etc!
orb.club/c/lenshackathon
What are my biggest expectations for the upcoming Lens Hackathon? I feel like many things are missing, but as both a user and a collector, the thing I miss the most is having a reason to collect. Touching on the topic of gambling here, I think what’s really lacking is a functionality that allows for some kind of turnover or exchange.
It’s great to support Lens creators and collect their posts to give them a virtual pat on the back, but even I, when I buy a vinyl record, always have that thought in the back of my mind that it might be worth something someday. There’s a market where I could potentially sell it if I needed to. In other words, there’s some kind of return on my investment.
Today, when I support my favorite Lens creators, I don’t really know what I’ll get out of it. And I’d like to know. I want my belief in their potential, growth, talent, art, and products to pay off one day. I’m really looking forward to a solution that introduces this element of trading or gambling—call it what you will—into the Lens ecosystem, to make collecting simply more exciting.
That thrill we all feel when we buy or sell a memecoin? That’s what I’m looking for. But I’ve had enough of memecoins. I’d rather have the same experience with the posts of my favorite creators.
The Lens community has a voice!
Apply as a judge to vote on Jokerace below.
Applications close on Dec 15, 2024.
oh7vm38ynd2.typeform.com/lensjudges
Join us for the Lens Holiday Hackathon: build on the Lens Network and Family’s Connect Kit and win cash prizes. The Lens Holiday Hackathon will be judged by the Lens community and the Avara team via Jokerace: the contest protocol for communities to run, grow, and monetise by deploying a contest on any EVM chain. Contests enable communities to submit and vote on entries and winners to earn reputation and rewards.
Hackathon kicks off: December 16th at 4pm CET.
Hacking ends: January 7th, 2025 at 4pm CET.
Voting / Judging period: January 8th, 4pm CET to January 12th, 4pm CET.