Lens Protocol founder: Social networks should be built with resilience in mind

BlockBeats news, on August 25, Aave and Lens Protocol founder Stani Kulechov wrote, "In light of the recent arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, I have been reflecting on how to build a "resilient approach" that can safeguard various rights, even if these rights (such as freedom of speech and content censorship) may produce conflicting situations.

First of all, when discussing resilient software, it is important to get rid of the concept of "decentralization." "Decentralization" is a misleading term, and there is rarely a consensus on its meaning.

Instead, social networks should be built with resilience as the focus. In fact, resilience means minimizing any single point of failure that could damage or affect the functionality and integrity of the network. This concept is easier to understand and measure.

For example, today's most successful DeFi projects are built this way. They do not necessarily aim to achieve a certain level of decentralization, but to ensure that protocols like Aave can withstand potential threats and single points of failure from various participants.

A truly resilient social network is one that is extremely difficult to infiltrate or disrupt by any single entity or coalition of entities.

Resilience ensures that participation in a network or protocol is secured at every level. Information flows should be resilient to manipulation or biased censorship. Curators should be protected from undue influence. Content should be resistant to removal by operators and fully controlled by its authors.

Currently, blockchain technology offers a way to achieve resiliency. At its core, blockchain ensures access control (who can write) and secure storage of value (assets). It can decide who can post in information flows, join communities, review content, serve as legitimate fact-checkers, and how funds are allocated in the network. In addition, it enables community-driven frameworks to select curators or fact-checkers through voting mechanisms.

For resiliency to work, accountability and transparency are key. Transparent networks are more resilient, and if privacy is required, guarantees like zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) can provide verifiability while ensuring transparency. Public blockchains already have these capabilities built in.

I believe that truly resilient social networks will open up new and interesting use cases because developers will no longer need to worry about being shut down.

These foundational principles will guide the development of Lens V3.