Bankless: Lens new feature introduction

Authored by: William M. Peaster, Bankless

Compiled by Tao Zhu, Golden Finance

In the social networking field on the Ethereum chain, there are currently two social network projects that dominate: Farcaster and Lens.

Currently, Farcaster sees about 1 million daily active wallets with Farcaster ID (FID), which is approximately 4 times the number of Lens accounts, while the number of Lens accounts is about 640,000.

However, please consider how these data are derived from the old Lens V2 system.

In other words, the project has already facilitated quite a bit of activity even in the transitional state before the launch of the revamped Lens V3 protocol, which will be introduced later this year on the new Lens Chain.

Similar to Snapchain and Frames V2, Lens V3’s arrival will bring a series of new innovations and opportunities to the Lens field, acting as a catalyst for Farcaster.

That being said, if you are not yet aware of the situation, let’s take a look at the latest development of Lens - the mainnet is coming soon.

New Lens

In November 2024, Lens launched Lens V3.

This upgrade has made a significant leap compared to the previous V2 on Polygon Polygon, by reorganizing the on-chain social interaction of Lens, making it supported by a more flexible and modular infrastructure.

Part of the reorganization? The protocol will be launched on the new custom Lens Chain, which is a second layer network based on ZKsync with Avail data availability, customized by the Lens team for low-cost social trading.

Another major shift in V3 is the introduction of social functions, acting as building blocks on the chain that developers can mix and match. These functions include:

Account - An ID based on smart contracts, replacing tokenized personal profiles, providing greater user control and portability.

Username - a completely transferable NFT that allows users to maintain multiple identities in different applications.

Charts - a redesigned attention system where developers can set custom rules, such as requiring NFTs to follow someone, etc.

Information Flow - on-chain content center, specifying who can publish, monetize, or plan content.

Groups - A community based on membership, with governance tools for entry, review, 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 for Lens Chain.

Great idea? Bring more predictability and accessibility to trading fees.

Of course, most chains rely on volatile assets to pay gas fees. For example, Lens V2 relies on Polygon’s MATIC (now POL). By using stablecoins like GHO, Lens V3 aims to maintain stable and simple transaction costs.

Technically, GHO will be integrated through ZKsync’s shared bridge, making it the main liquidity pool for Lens Chain users.

Lens Chain Migration

In February 2025, Lens migrated its V2 data from Polygon to the V3 smart contract on the Lens Chain testnet, taking another major step towards the mainnet.

As part of the transition, Lens successfully transferred over 125GB of data, including existing personal profiles, 28 million follower connections, 16 million posts, and 360 Lens applications.

Therefore, once the Lens Chain mainnet goes offline, users do not need to take any manual steps to prepare - their social graph will be completely intact, and popular Lens applications such as Hey and Orb will be available from day one.

At the same time, the Lens team has begun to phase out the Lens V2 protocol and Momoka (their previous custom data solution, Avail will replace it in V3).

Propose using ZIP-7

Finally, the Lens team has just proposed ZIP-7 to the ZKsync community governance: Lens Chain will be incorporated into the Elastic Network.

The proposal has now entered the formal on-chain voting stage, which will integrate Lens Chain with the Elastic Network (ZKsync’s L2 interoperable ecosystem).

Usually no governance is needed to launch here, but in this case governance is needed because Lens Chain is designed to have its custom genesis state migration, which requires special voting.

The voting period will end on March 10, 2025, so we will soon know the results. Stay tuned - the result of “approval” will pave the way for the launch of Lens V3 and open the next important chapter for the Lens community.