Scaling Decentralized Social Is Tough — Lens Protocol Claims to Have a Solution

Twitter at peak usage, might process 25,000 transactions per second. For a Web3 social layer to compete, it must be able to handle a similar number without sacrificing the ideals of decentralization: user sovereignty and security.

Lens Protocol, a leading attempt at a decentralized social graph, launched Bonsai, an attempt to address its scaling needs with what is described as “an optimistic layer-3 hyperscaling solution.”

Bonsai — which is available in closed beta for developers as of Wednesday — will potentially reduce gas costs and increase data throughput for the Polygon proof-of-stake-based social protocol, by allowing builders to store transactions off chain, the developers at Aave, the company that created Lens Protocol, said in a statement.

“To be competitive with web2, decentralized social must scale. With the ability to support mass consumer adoption, we’ll see continued web3 innovation,” said Stani Kulechov, CEO of Aave Companies and founder of Lens Protocol.

Despite these transactions being moved off the Polygon proof-of-stake chain, with Bonsai they will be available and verifiable via off-chain storage layers, to cut down on limitations associated with blocktime and blockspace, according to the statement.

A Lens Protocol blog post further explained that these “data availability layers” can hold more information for on-chain assets such as NFTs.

“Storing data on-chain is expensive, and EVM machines can only process a limited number of transactions per block based on maximum gas limits a block is configured to handle,” it said.
Blockworks previously reported that Lens Protocol had over 100,000 users as of February and were working to bring over 100 applications to market, including decentralized Twitter alternative Lenster.