LittleBit's Guide to Onchain

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Social Media & Content Creation ​

Onchain technology introduces an interesting new paradigm for social media, where people can earn from content people like without worrying about subscription fees or gated communities like on offchain platforms. Also, onchain means that users of a social network don't have to worry about control by a single entity (although decentralization by federation can solve this too, such as with Mastodon/the Fediverse).

Nostr ​

Nostr is a very simple protocol designed around small JSON blobs called notes, and servers called relays. You set up an account with a set of relays, and when you post it sends a note to your relays. Someone can then find the relays you use to find your notes.

Nostr also supports "zapping", where you can send small tips to creators you like using Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.

If you want to get started with Nostr, you'll need a client, since Nostr is just the protocol/architecutre that apps can run on. Two very popular options are Primal and YakiHonne, with Nostria being an fully-featured option for desktop web browsers (and mobile with PWA support to some extent).

Primal and YakiHonne also feature built-in Lightning wallets. Primal's latest release features a self-custody Lightning wallet based on the Breez SDK and Spark network. YakiHonne features both a standard custodial Lightning wallet running on Alby's infrastructure and a Cashu wallet.

Farcaster ​

While you can't really earn from being on Farcaster, Farcaster is a notable mention since it's likely the first onchain social network. It's also highly extensible thanks to the Mini App platform, which has been copied by the Base and World apps.

It's a very Twitter-like feed, with your posts called casts. You can also cast in Channels, spaces for topic-related casts. The app also has direct messages (Direct Casts), a wallet (although the Farcaster app wallet can only be used in Farcaster Mini Apps), and a page for trending tokens.

The Base App ​

Since the Base App has a social feed, I might as well mention it here. I already mentioned in the Ethereum wallets section about the infinite token problem, but passing that the social feed is just a copy of Farcaster.

If you just want the Twitter part, you can view the Talk page instead of the Trade page on the social feed and make posts with earnings turned off. It's sad that it has to be this way, but the Base App's wallet and chat features are better than the official Farcaster app.

Lens Protocol ​

Lens is the other major onchain social network, although Lens doesn't really have an official app. They do have an official signup page at https://onboarding.lens.xyz, but that's the extent of official frontends. My favorite frontends for Lens are Soclly or Palus for web/desktop and Orb for mobile.

Every Lens Account is also a wallet for the Lens Chain. The Lens Chain is fully stablecoin-native, using Aave's GHO stablecoin (US Dollar denominated). You can easily fund your Lens Account at websites like https://across.to, by converting USDC on other chains into GHO on Lens Chain. You can also use Orb to send GHO from your Lens Account back to another wallet as USDC on Base or Polygon.

You'll need a wallet to sign up for and use Lens. I would recommend Family or Zerion since they support Lens Chain. You can also start using Lens with a Family Account (email and password/passkey). Although the Family wallet app is only available on iOS, you can export your wallet's seed phrase from the Family website (https://family.co) to use with other EVM wallets.

Lens's Powerful Earning Features ​

Lens is probably the best social network to demonstrate the paradigm of “it pays to be here” or “everyone can earn”, with two headline features that make it easy for people to support content they love.

First, Lens allows you to enable post collection when posting content. You can make it free or paid, infinite or limited time, infinite or limited quantity. You can even choose to split the revenue with other Lens users if you collaborated or just feel like doing it. I split revenue on a video mentioning Orb with kipto because he's the current head of Orb. See that video on Palus.

Second, Lens supports tipping. Even if a creator doesn't enable collection on a post that you love, you can still support them with a tip. Just select the option to tip and choose how much of what token you want to send.

Orb's Special Features ​

The mobile Lens client Orb has some special features of its own.

  • Stickers: You can buy Sticker Packs from a store in the Orb App using funds in your Lens Account. The sticker packs have a dynamic pricing curve, with the price going up with each purchase. You can use these stickers in DMs, or as a reaction on posts. People on other Lens clients will just see your reaction as a like.
  • Prediction Markets: Remember that some of the wallets had prediction markets? Well, on Orb you can host your own prediction markets. No mini app required. Stake in a certain choice and see if you win. (please use responsibly)
  • Crowdfunding: You can host a crowdfunding campaign under your post, also with no mini app required.

Special-Purpose Lens Frontends ​

There are some special-purpose frontends for the Lens ecosystem.

  • 0xfm: Are you a musician? Upload your music in a Lens post, and people can play it on 0xfm.
  • Fountain: Blogging platform. Use the same profile you use for social posting for a blog.
  • LensForum: Like Reddit, but on Lens.

Odysee ​

Odysee is a YouTube-like platform where people can share videos, audio, blog posts, and general files. Right now its backend is based on a blockchain called LBRY (pronounced “library”), but they're working to switch to another blockchain called Arweave.

They do have the option to “Sync YouTube Channel” (which I call “porting”), but it has restrictions that limit its effectiveness. Another option if you want to join Odysee and bring YouTube content over would be to use Google Takeout or yt-dlp to download your YouTube channel's content and choose what to reupload on Odysee manually.

Arweave is already in use for monetization on the platform; Odysee shares a similar paradigm to Lens that monetization is open and not ad-driven. You can tip a channel using using the AR token from a video page or channel page, and creators can also paywall videos either by directly setting prices for videos or putting videos behind a subscription membership.

To use Arweave on Odysee you'll need the Wander wallet from the Arweave wallets page.

If you use a link-in-bio service supporting an option to show people your crypto addresses, notably Gravatar, some Arweave addresses may be seen as invalid by that service (especially if the address contains non-alphanumeric characters). If this happens on Gravatar, simply choose to add a Payment instead of a Currency, and put “https://viewblock.io/arweave/address” before your address. For example, on my Gravatar page the “AR” payment leads to https://viewblock.io/arweave/address/keNro...mCx-k.