We are thrilled to announce that Lens Protocol chose Bundlr as the storage and ordering layer for Momoka, the innovative scaling solution that makes it possible for applications built on Lens to scale for mass consumer adoption.

“Bundlr played a key role in the Momoka scaling solution,” said Aave Companies Founder and CEO and Founder of Lens Protocol, Stani Kulechov. “With Bundlr, Momoka provides the type of social media experience users expect and scales to support mass adoption.”

“Momoka is an innovative scaling solution for web3 social. We are really proud to be part of this novel solution, which uses Bundlr to provide decentralized storage and increase throughput at a lower cost,” said Bundlr Founder and CEO, Josh Benaron.

Launched last week, Lens Protocol selected Bundlr as its data layer for Momoka, an optimistic hybrid scaling solution for decentralized social media. This allows users to post transactions to either Polygon, to interact with smart contracts, or to Bundlr as a storage and ordering layer with cheaper fees. With Bundlr, Lens can:

• Handle transactional throughput on par with social media giants

• Access 1000x cheaper fees and 700x lower latency than the EVM with a permanent storage layer while maintaining user ownership

• Create a simple and trustless verification process

• Provide guarantees on writing and ordering transactions at scale to maximize reliability and accurately order posts

• Enable instant access to censorship-resistant permanent storage on Arweave

Since first introduced in May 2022, Lens has provided a permissionless, composable, and decentralized social graph that makes building a Web3-native social platform viable. The Lens team has been deeply committed to developing the social layer for Web3, reinventing decentralized social media aligned with the principles of decentralization, community ownership, and creator empowerment.

The content posted to Lens is permissionlessly available through smart contracts and an API. This means users are in control of their data, from posts to their audience to how they monetize this audience. Users receive a level of ownership that is non-existent on centralized social platforms. As this data is fully portable and censorship-resistant, there is zero risk of being de-platformed and losing access to one’s audience and content.

Scaling Lens and the principles they represent in a cost-effective and user-friendly way was a daunting technical challenge. To gain mass adoption over the long run, Lens needed to build a solution that could support global events like the 2022 FIFA World Cup, in which Twitter experienced over 25,000 tweets per second. For Lens, scalability was critical.

Why didn’t Lens simply store state indefinitely on EVM? Because of the sheer volume of data produced, storage on the EVM would be exceedingly expensive and would only have the ability to process a limited number of transactions per block, based on maximum gas limits. Other alternatives could not meet Lens’ requirements of low latency and high transactions per second without having to compromise one for the other. Lens needed to find an alternative solution that had low storage costs, low latency, and higher throughput capabilities.

“Momoka is an innovative solution for scaling web3 social apps that uses Bundlr for storage and ordering of Lens posts and interactions. By reducing the cost of storage and increasing the speed of transactions, Momoka will help power web3 social apps that are on par with what consumers expect from today's most popular social media and networking apps,” said Senior Principal Engineer of Lens Protocol, Josh Stevens.

Solution: Bundlr for Storage and Ordering

To solve these obstacles, Lens decided to build its hybrid scaling solution using Bundlr, as its scalable storage and ordering layer, and Polygon as the smart contract chain for verification. Bundlr as a storage and ordering layer is 1000x more cost-effective with 700x lower latency, whilst allowing data to be produced and queryable instantly, creating an improved UX.

With the integration of Bundlr, users now have the option of either posting transactions onchain to Polygon, if they need to interact with other smart contracts or perform trustless financial transactions, or to Bundlr’s data layer.

One of the most significant challenges of this hybrid approach was maintaining transaction order across the two different systems. Lens solved this problem with an innovative simulation solution that guarantees the real-time chronological sequence of user transactions, regardless of whether they are posted to Polygon or Bundlr. This allows seamless interoperability between Lens data on Polygon and Bundlr.

Lens’ growth goals require the ability to handle a high volume of users at once. Bundlr‘s horizontal scaling enables Lens to handle throughput volumes on par with today’s social media giants and allows users to use the system in parallel rather than waiting in line for consensus. Now, Lens doesn’t have to worry about hitting limits that can create downtime.

An additional component of Lens’ modular approach is storing calldata (function inputs) on Bundlr instead of paying to execute them onchain. This approach retains security because transactions and their sequence are executed and verified on Polygon using Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) simulations. This allows Lens to economize transaction costs by moving computation offchain to independent local verifiers that simulate the transactions stored in Bundlr on the verification node by using an archive Polygon node. This is a completely trustless process.

Lens verifiers are responsible for simulating the EVM transactions and ensuring the current Lens state is valid. Verifiers pull the latest transactions from Bundlr’s GraphQL and verify the timestamps generated by Bundlr. This allows verifiers to confirm the order provided by Bundlr has not been edited or falsified. They will then simulate the transactions based on the transaction information stored on Bundlr to confirm the proofs. This hybrid capability of supporting both Polygon and Bundlr transactions enables flexibility to users who want to choose between cheap transactions on Bundlr and contract composability on Polygon. Lens verifiers have a trustless and permissionless setup and are extremely cheap, with the ability to run on commercial hardware. This allows anyone to participate in the verification process, contributing to Lens’s push toward decentralization.

With Bundlr, Lens can use Polygon EVM addresses to sign and save actions on Bundlr and serve as a tool to store data permanently and rapidly. Submitters’ identities are tied to the Polygon addresses used to submit the action metadata to the storage layer. Verifiers check the latest actions that have occurred by pulling from the Bundlr GraphQL. This reduces complexity and creates a seamless experience for submitters and verifiers.

All Lens transactions posted through Bundlr are stored permanently for at least 200 years on Arweave’s decentralized storage, enabling censorship-resistant history for social feeds and engagement. Now, all the memories shared with your community, friends, and family will be accessible for generations to admire.

Bundlr has been laser-focused on solving data scalability challenges to truly enable protocols like Lens and the applications in its ecosystem to bring decentralized social media to everyone. Bundlr will continue to support Lens’ scaling needs for other actions and future innovations.

To learn more about Lens Protocol, check out their website and developer documentation. For more information on Momoka, check out their latest blog, GitHub, and dive into Momoka Explorer.

To learn more about Bundlr and our technology, check out our documentation and YouTube. For more information, feel free to reach out on Twitter, or Discord.