A lot has happened over the past few months in the @LensProtocol ecosystem.

In this thread I want to highlight some of the projects, updates, and products we or the community has shipped over the past year and also shed some light on what's coming next. 🌿❤️‍🔥⚡️

For anyone unfamiliar with @LensProtocol - Lens is a protocol, API, and suite of tools that enables developers to easily and quickly build social media applications, or integrate social features like follows, likes, publications, profiles, and encrypted chat.

Since the official launch on Polygon on May 18:

twitter.com/LensProtocol/status/1526944792013316097

... there have been around 100 apps that I would consider serious that are being built or that have launched on Lens.

www.lens.xyz/apps

There are also many apps integrating Lens social features into existing apps.

This use case will be a popular and growing one this year as it is a low lift and requires minimal work, but with a lot of upside.

Want to parse social posts in your wallet? Lens

Want to add a comments section to your blog? Lens

Already have posts/comments but want to add Collects, linked re-posts, and linked likes to your posts? Lens

Want to add a discussion forum to your site that's token-gated for your DAO? Lens

Want to leverage a user base of x hundreds of thousands (or in the future, x millions) of users without having to bootstrap a network from scratch? Lens!

Like managed services and cloud computing has abstracted away the need to build abd maintain complex back end infrastructure from scratch, Lens abstracts away to the need for developers to build and maintain the infrastructure necessary to implement social features themselves.

Whether or not Lens is built on traditional or decentralized technologies should not matter to the average user or developer.

At the end of the day, many of the features provided by Lens are only made possibly by blockchains and decentralized protocols like Arweave and IPFS, but they should not be at the forefront of the discussion.

Instead, the applications should speak for themselves: the UX and value proposition should be compelling enough on their own for the average internet user or developer to want to use or build on Lens, regardless of the underlying tech stack.

Part of providing a compelling UX is abstracting away the need to know about or understand blockchains and wallets at all.

As of now, this is not part of the average Lens front-end, but is something we'll be considering this year as we move toward scaling Lens to >50,000 TPS and enabling permissionless access to the protocol (both of which are on our somewhat near-term roadmap).

For developers, we plan to double down on providing the best possible DX we can offer for developers.

Last year we made consistent updates and improvements to our docs and API and launched two new SDKS:

Lens React SDK

twitter.com/dabit3/status/1606383208089718794

and React Native Lens UI Kit

twitter.com/dabit3/status/1600188853297377280

We have a lot of plans for these two libraries, and will also be considering shipping additional products to facilitate and improve the ease of development for devs building on or integrating Lens.

The engineering team led by @wagmi continues to ship new updates to the Lens API at a rapid pace.

You can keep up with the updates by following LensAPI on Lens: @lensapi

A small handful of highlights I will call out that were shipped last year:

• gated publications powered by @LitProtocol

• dispatcher enabling signless transactions

• optimistic UI updates

• feed highlights

• degrees of separation

• profile interests

• many many others

In November, Lens adopted @xmtplabs to provide secure, private, and encrypted profile-to-profile DMs for the entire Lens ecosystem.

This was huge as it was one of the most requested features from Lens users and the reception has been incredible.

twitter.com/xmtp_/status/1588200030820704257

The Lens grants program has deployed funds to over 50 teams building on Lens.

We plan to continue working closely with, and providing support for, certain developers and teams who are building interesting or valuable applications on Lens through our grants program and / or providing engineering support through private channels.

We will be attending, mentoring, participating, and sponsoring strategic events in 2023, including branching out into more traditional "web2" events.

We plan to attend all major @ETHGlobal events, DevCon, & a few other web3 / blockchain events.

We also plan to create small to medium-sized meetup-type events this year in cities around the world starting with Sao Paulo in a couple of weeks.

Here, people can meet others in their community who are using or building on Lens, and also get allow-listed for a profile until permissionless access is enabled for everyone.

There is a lot of hype around web3 social right now:

twitter.com/ljin18/status/1610688970173878272

I agree that 2023 will be a huge year for web3 social and for Lens.

We are focused, motivated, and excited to continue building off of the momentum created last year to make 2023 a breakout year for Lens.

There is a lot more happening outside of DevRel, with dedicated teams working with creators (@christina & @bradorbradley) and also other areas of focus like integrations and partnerships.

I have not done a good job highlighting everything else happening in the ecosystem and with the other teams.

If you do want to keep up, follow Lens team members on Lens and on Twitter, starting with:

@christina

@bradorbradley

@fabri

@yoginth

@stani

@paris

@donosonaumczuk

@wagmi

@davidev

@sasicodes

@pealco

That wraps up this overview.

I'm beyond excited and motivated about what we will be working on this year and invite you enjoy the ride with us!

If you've made it this far congratulations, you can earn 1 WMATIC by simply mirroring this post (up to 200 WMATIC)

🌿