MOMOKA, The New L3 for Social Media 2.0
Momoka: the scaling solution for Lens.
For those who are not familiar with Lens, it is a decentralized on-chain social network that I personally believe is the best positioned to represent the new paradigm of Social Networks.
What is Momoka?
As part of their quest to scale the architecture of Lens to fully support data synchronization at hyper-scale, they have developed Momoka, an Optimistic L3 scaling solution processing transactions designed to support the next generation of Web3 social users.
The biggest challenge about Web3 socials (or blockchain-based socials), is how you deal with synchronization, with the amount of data and the transactions happening in the network, and how you process them.
By using L1s, you are always going to be limited by the block size and the block space. In fact, how many transactions you can create and execute is limited:
Polygon: POS less than 100
Some others might have more throughput due to bigger blocks
There’s always a cap due to infrastructural limits.
As such, using a blockchain is really good to secure your network and tokenize the value you are creating, however, it is pretty tough to scale and integrate in a social network environment (e.g. in the case of transactions where you only want data availability and don’t need the full security guaranteed by a blockchain).
Data Availability (DA) works in a different way than a blockchain: for instance, you can create as much data as you wish, and store it on a DA layer, as such you are not limited by block size, but rather can transact as much as you want.
This is the necessary scale to take Web3 social to the next level and wider adoption.
The tech Stack of Momoka is built on top of:
Arweave: a decentralized solution to scale Web3 data
Bundlr: a decentralized DA layer to store Web3 data
That’s how cheap Momoka is:
What is the use case here?
To synch and submit Lens posts and comments.
But also anything else where you need a massive scale for data.
What Momoka does is leverage this DA layer, but also works as a verification protocol for data.
Effectively Momoka can be defined as a “data verification protocol”.
It is a tool that allows the creation of transactions without the need to send them back-on chain, putting them on a DA layer, but also a way to verify that these transactions are correct.
Momoka allows you to run either a:
Submitter: submits data in a particular form;
Verifier: look into the data submitted in the DA layer and has been executed in the correct way.
Data verifiers have to come up with a network agreement consensus that the data is correct (incentives/slashing models can be introduced).
Lens still uses Polygon blockspace to create a profile but then taps into the DA layer to scale all the other actions that don’t really need to use that security deriving from being included in the Polygon blockchain.
What this means is that there won’t be a tokenized version of a comment on-chain, BUT, if the comment becomes interesting, then it can always be pulled back on-chain:
For instance, if they get enough likes, then comments can be converted into on-chain assets that can be collected.
Lens Vision
Using the blockchain in a more optimistic way
Let creators decide which content is relevant to be tokenized and leveraging blockchain security.
This flexibility is necessary and fundamental in web3 socials and building social applications.
WTF is an L3?
It is an optimistic way of building Web3 socials and interacting with the blockchain.
An L3 is intended as something on top of an L2 (e.g. on top of Lens on Polygon).
What Momoka really does is create blockchain transactions, but they are not rolled on L1 or L2. It submits them for verification and stores them on a DA layer (e.g. similar to an L1 infrastructure).
There’s not really a perfect categorization, as Momoka can be intended as an L2 for data availability + Data Verification Aspect = Hybrid Model, L3 (Data Scaling Solution)
Momoka is an Open Source software, that can be adapted and forked for further use cases (e.g. not everyone may be familiar with everyone seeing their comments). The team is currently writing a Rust client, to improve the speed of Momoka.
Things are ramping up for Lens, for instance, last week they released the Lens SDK: just 10 lines of code that facilitate development on the Protocol.
How does Stani envision the future of Lens protocol as a DEX social layer?
First of all, WEN Lens open to the Public?
Stani says hopefully by the EOY.
How are they going to decentralize the whole protocol?
Starting from smaller teams executing, deploying, expanding, upgrading the protocol, and thinking about how to make Lens more of a public good.
For instance, there could be progressive decentralization.
Tach stack of social networks is pretty complex and being able to create basic mechanisms and support for media is a very tough process.
It will happen in different steps:
Make Lens protocol public
Get the community involved in decision-making (profile-based voting, follow-based governance, etc.)
Starting those feedback loops as early as possible is extremely valuable.
The Lens community is heavily involved in providing feedback: from the creation of Metadata standards to involvement in Lens Improvement Proposals, giving anyone the chance to submit proposals, and promoting open discussion.
Three fundamental proposals are already up for vote:
Currently, Momoka handles between 25-50% of all transactions on Lens:
But what can you build on Momoka?
Buttrfly: an enhanced browser
Chess with Frens: chess on Lens
Food for Thought
What Lens is doing is incredibly impressive.
They are constantly building and setting the basic infrastructure that will sprout the future of Social Media.
Sure, the current experience may be less optimal than traditional social media e are used to. But solutions like Momoka are key to abstracting the backend complexity of blockchain-based social media and leaving users with a simple and plain UX — like what they are used to.
The current developments of Lens are hugely undervalued and not enough attention is being paid to them: I only see airdrop threads on this, while I believe it is one of the most interesting development yet.
Also, there’s lots of speculation about it:
Is Momoka going to be the first L3 Token to airdrop?