Lens Protocol is the leading project in what’s known as Decentralized Social Media. This web3 branch aims to give the power of data and social graphs back to its users.
Don’t know what a social graph is? Imagine the possibilities of building your own recommendation algorithms based on likes, follows, comments, etc. No more battling it out with traditional social media’s biased content suggestions, you can take that information and build more human and connected platforms.
You're already eligible to claim a Lens profile just for being a RabbitHole credentials holder, so today, we'll be sharing a quick step-by-step on how to do it, so you can take full advantage of what these innovative social platforms have to offer!
In this article, you’ll learn:
- What is Lens Protocol?
- What is Decentralized Social.
- How to claim your own Lens profile.
What You’ll Need to Complete this Task
In order to complete this task, you’ll need the following:
- A crypto wallet.
- The Polygon Network added to your Wallet (You can do so through Chainlist.org).
- Any RabbitHole credential (we'll be using the NFT one for this guide).
- Some MATIC to claim your profile.
There's no better place to read in-depth explanations of the hard to grasp concepts in web3 than our RabbitHole Learn Hub. Here's our guide if you'd like to learn more about Decentralized Social.
Before we Start
Lens protocol is an exciting new project coming from the Aave community, how about we take a moment to explain why you should be bullish on decentralized social?
- What is Lens?: Lens Protocol is a composable and decentralized social graph. What does that mean? Imagine if you could take your myspace profile, and import it directly into facebook, or tik tok. It remains the same profile even if different platforms are tapping into it.
- What is Decentralized Social?: They’re platforms looking to make human connection less about attention-grabbing algorithms and more about empowering creators. They read the data contained in decentralized social graphs, and cater your experience based on what’s in there.
By allowing you to own your connections, posts and interactions on social media, protocols like lens allow you to build all sorts of interesting projects around web3 communities, and create your own customized content feeds without worrying about manipulative algorithms. Plus, keeping your data away from traditional social media’s hands is always a good thing.
How to Claim a Lens Profile
Lens Protocol has taken an interesting approach to opening up the floodgates. Instead of letting everyone join right away, they've opted for a more curated way of gaining access to claiming your profile.
This helps them keep the sybils and bots away by screening for contribution, and active participation in web3. We partnered with Lens back in the day to grant all our credentials holders access to Lens. If you were attentive enough, and got your creds early, you should be good to go.
It doesn't end there though. To celebrate this new quest, we've opened up our whitelist once again for all credentials holders. So if you didn't hold RabbitHole credentials at the time. Now's your chance. Our snapshots will happen on Thursday, Friday and Monday (from the 11th to the 15th of August, 2022)
To claim your Lens profile and own your decentralized social identity, you only need to visit the Lens claim page, connect your credential-holding wallet and enter your new handle.
After submitting your claim transaction and signing it with your wallet, you'll now be able to set up your follower preferences, bio, and anything else you'd expect from social media.
Closing Thoughts
Lens and the decentralized social graph are just getting started, there’s already a handful of exciting platforms being built thanks to the information Lens Protocol provides. The best way to see the potential of what’s cooking on this side of web3 is to jump in and experiment it for yourself!
After reading this guide, you'll have a brand new profile to carry around decentralized platforms like Lenster, Lensfrens and Lenstube. There's sure to be plenty more to come, so go out and experiment! How about you learn how to use Lenster next?