🎙 Stani Kulechov on Building a Social Network for Web3 so Users are Not the Product

This week on the Defiant Podcast we speak to Stani Kulechov, founder & CEO of Aave, one of the first lending protocols in the DeFi space. He has been around since the inception of DeFi, now Aave Labs is the leading force in this completely new side to the web3 universe; social media.

Lens aims to reimagine how social networks are built, providing an open protocol for applications to flourish, and giving users the freedom to own their information and take that data with them when they move from one app to the next. Creators and influencers would monetize their content by reaching their audiences directly, and applications would gain revenue from these transactions, rather than relying on ads.

We discuss the benefits and the risks of this model. While it provides more choice and should incentivize platforms to provide a better service, is there potential for some users to be priced out of that content behind token-gated paywalls? The norm in web2 is free-to-view content. Are added incentives of decentralization and data control enough of a carrot to justify the added cost? Stani also dives into user stats in the first two months since Lens launched, and discusses what’s next for the protocol.

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

📺 Watch the video here:

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👀 Only paid subscribers have access to the full interview transcript below.