The team behind Web3 social media protocol Lens has announced a new solution to scale blockchain social media applications. According to an April 26 announcement, the new network, called “Momoka,” processes and stores posts, comments, and shares, removing that data from the Polygon network to improve Lens' scalability.
Lens is a blockchain protocol that allows users to form a portable "social graph" or set of digital connections between themselves and others. When users connect with another person on one Lens app, they can transfer those connections to any other app built on the protocol . The protocol's official website lists 17 different Lens-based social media apps, including Buttrfly, DumplingTV, Lenster, Lenstube, and more. Lens runs on Ethereum's layer 2 Polygon network.
In a technical document linked to the announcement, the Lens team says the Polygon network cannot handle the transaction volume or data storage needs of large social media applications, necessitating a new "optimistic L3 hyperscale data solution" for rollout. According to the document, the shared blockchain network can only handle up to 200 transactions per second (TPS), compared with 40 to 50 TPS for Lens' predecessor. In comparison, it says Twitter regularly does 25,000 TPS at peak times.
The team anticipates that this limitation could prevent the protocol from scaling as its user base grows. To solve this problem, Momoka launched as Layer 2 of Polygon itself, or "L3" of the Ethereum network. Momoka uses Bundlr, a decentralized storage p platform built On top of Arweave, to store large files along with verification data about them.
According to the technical paper, the network consists of three types of nodes: committers, validators, and timestamps. Submitters validate transactions, build metadata, and submit them to Bundlr. Validators monitor the data submitted by submitters and confirm that it is valid. timestamp determines the correct block number and timestamp for a particular data block.
The document states that the system should “[give] consumers the experience they expect from a social network (instant posts, etc.).”
Stani Kulechov, founder of Lens Protocol, believes that Momoka will be an important step in driving the mass adoption of Web3 social applications: “To compete with web2, decentralized social must scale. With the ability to support mass consumer adoption, we will see continue ued web3 innovation new, exciting and compelling features and business models will stimulate web3 adoption."
In recent years, several companies have created decentralized social media protocols, including Lens, Subsocial, DeSo, and others. The developers hope the applications will help broaden the blockchain network's appeal beyond the financial world. While none of them have been as successful as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other Web2 social apps, some blockchain experts believe that decentralized social media will be the next big thing in crypto.
