Aave launches open source platform for social networking DApps on Polygon

Aave (AAVE) has announced a new project called Lens Protocol, which is focused on helping developers build decentralized social networking applications (DApps) on the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain.

Aside from social media DApps, the Liquidity Market Protocol creators aim to use Nonfungible Token (NFT) technology along with Lens’ open-source blockchain technology to allow developers to create marketplaces, recommendation algorithms and other applications enable. According to Aave, this will allow users to fully own their own data and offer creators new monetization opportunities.

The Lens protocol allows users to have a single Lens profile that can be used across different DApps within the Lens platform. This will allow users capable of creating Lens NFT profiles to access the 50 apps that will be published on the Lens protocol at launch. In order to encourage development of more apps on Lens, Aave has also launched a $250,000 grant program to fund developers who want to build apps on the platform.

Stani Kulechov, CEO and Founder of Aave Companies, believes people are ready for a new social media experience, as reflected in reactions to Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter. Kulekhov explained:

“The social media experience has remained relatively unchanged over the past decade, and a lot of that is because your content is owned solely by one company that encapsulates your social network on one platform.”

Aave’s CEO also noted that ownership of content created online is “long overdue.” Additionally, Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon’s co-founder, agreed with Kulechov’s view, saying that Polygon aligns with Lens’ goal of promoting “safe content ownership.”

Related: Spotify is reportedly testing NFT galleries on musician profiles

Back in April, Kulechov was banned from Twitter after jokingly tweeting that he was joining Twitter as interim CEO. The ban was lifted the next day when Kulechov tweeted another joke saying he was back as the company’s interim CEO.