By William M. Peaster, Bankless
Compiled by: Tao Zhu, Golden Finance
In the on-chain social field of Ethereum, there are currently two social network projects that dominate: Farcaster and Lens.
Currently, Farcaster sees about 4 times the number of daily active wallets (DAWs) than Lens through about 1 million Farcaster IDs (FIDs), while Lens has about 640,000 accounts.
However, consider how this data originated from the old Lens V2 system.
In other words, the project has already facilitated quite a bit of activity even in a transitional state ahead of the launch of the revamped Lens V3 protocol, which will be launched on the new Lens Chain later this year.
Similar to how Snapchain and Frames V2 were catalysts for Farcaster, the arrival of Lens V3 will bring a series of new innovations and opportunities to the Lens field.
That being said, if you haven’t already, let’s catch up on the latest Lens developments — mainnet is coming soon.
New Lenses
In November 2024, Lens launched Lens V3.
This upgrade is a major leap forward from the previous V2 on Polygon Polygon by restructuring Lens’ on-chain social interactions so that they are supported by a more flexible and modular infrastructure.
Part of the reorg? The protocol will launch on the new custom Lens Chain, a ZKsync-based layer 2 (L2) network with Avail data availability, which the Lens team customized for low-cost social transactions.
Another major shift in V3 is the introduction of social features, which act as on-chain building blocks that developers can mix and match. These features include:
- Accounts — smart contract-based IDs that replace tokenized profiles, providing greater user control and portability.
- Usernames — Fully transferable NFTs that allow users to maintain multiple identities across different applications.
- Graph - Redesigned follow system where developers can set custom rules, such as requiring NFTs to follow someone, etc.
- Information Streams — On-chain content hubs that dictate who can publish, monetize, or curate content.
- Groups – Membership-based communities with governance tools for entry, moderation, and exclusive content access.
GHO as Gas
In February 2025, Lens announced that it would use Aave's decentralized stablecoin GHO as the native gas token of Lens Chain.
The big idea? Bringing more predictability and accessibility to transaction fees.
Of course, most chains rely on volatile assets to pay gas fees. For example, Lens V2 relied on Polygon's MATIC (now POL). By using stablecoins like GHO, Lens V3 aims to keep transaction costs stable and simple.
Technically, GHO will be integrated through ZKsync’s shared bridge, which will make it the main liquidity pool for Lens Chain users.
Lens chain migration
In February 2025, Lens migrated its V2 data from Polygon to V3 smart contracts on the Lens Chain testnet, taking another big step towards the mainnet.
As part of the transition, Lens successfully transferred over 125GB of data, including existing profiles, 28 million follower connections, 16 million posts, and 360 Lens apps.
So once the Lens Chain mainnet goes offline, users won’t need to take any manual steps to prepare — their social graph will be completely intact, and popular Lens apps like Hey and Orb will be available from day one.
In the meantime, the Lens team has begun retiring the Lens V2 protocol and Momoka (their previous custom data solution, which Avail will replace in V3).
Proposed use of ZIP-7
Finally, the Lens team has just proposed ZIP-7 to the ZKsync community governance: Lens Chain is included in the Elastic Network.
The proposal, which has now entered the formal on-chain voting phase, will integrate Lens Chain with Elastic Network, ZKsync’s L2 interoperability ecosystem.
Normally governance is not required to launch here, but it is required in this case because Lens Chain is designed to migrate at its custom genesis state, which requires a special vote.
The voting period ends on March 10, 2025, so we’ll know the results soon. Stay tuned—a “yes” result will clear the way for the launch of Lens V3 and begin the next important chapter for the Lens community.
