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The extremely popular decentralized finance (DeFi) lending and borrowing platform Aave has announced the launch of Lens Protocol, which is going to be the foundation for new social media applications.

There aren't any live applications running yet, but Lens Protocol will act as the infrastructure for future decentralized social media applications.

Lens is using the Ethereum scaling solution Polygon, where Aave has been operating for nearly a year now. 

The project is said to use a "Web3, smart contracts-based social graph" that uses NFTs to store data and value. So far we know that users will be able to create NFT-based profiles that "contain the history of all posts, mirrors, comments, and other content you generate." 

Unlike traditional social media platforms, Users of Lens will own their own data and their own content. 

This plan has been in development for several months now, and was first announced by Aave founder Stani Kulechov, who said that he was working on a decentralized competitor to Twitter. 

After the initial announcement, Kulechov told Decrypt, "We believe that content creators should own their audiences in a permissionless fashion, where anyone can build new user experiences by using the same on-chain social graph and data." 

He added that "Twitter makes all the revenue from your tweets and the content you share, and Twitter decides which of your tweets get traction through the algorithm."

In a recent open letter about the launch of Lens Protocol, the team said,  "We, the content creators of the world, deserve to hold the power and control over what we publish."

In addition to being an open protocol where users have control of their own content and data, they will also share in the ownership and the governance of the platform.

There have been many different attempts to develop blockchain based social media projects with different levels of success, but this time one of the most well-funded and well-respected teams in the space are involved. Aave is an essential part of the DeFi ecosystem, and the team seems philosophically dedicated to doing this right. 

There is nothing for you to try out yet, but Lens does have a Twitter account and a Discord server where you can keep up with all of the most recent updates and be one of the first people to get involved. 

-A new blockchain-based social media network called Lens Protocol will be launching soon

-The team and founder behind the popular DeFi lending platform Aave is behind the development of Lens Protocol

-Lens users will own their own data and have total control of their own content

-The project will be launching on the Ethereum scaling solution Polygon