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Inspiration

Web2 is taking more than inspiration from Web3, especially with NFTs and PFPs. But Web3 should take over Web2 by storm. Yet the mobile phone space remains still untouched. Although the Lens Protocol is still in its infancy, it has already provided promising seedlings Lenster and Lenstagram. Here in GraphHack, we present the newest offshoot Lensed-In. Lensed-In lays the foundation for a decentralized professional social network. Think of LinkedIn but Web3. Web3 is currently stationary with heavy computers. We think that by being a mobile-first app we reach both more users but also increase activity in the ecosystem. We also theorize that by making web3 more mobile, new-to-web3 users can be onboarded.

What it does

Our Lensed-In is an end-to-end product that lives on Polygon. With both mobile and web apps, one can currently browse the job listings. Using the web app one can also post new jobs. The prospective candidates can reach directly to the recruiters using traditional email and without a need for logging in. This also works with ENS names!! The transactions are gasless. And no assets are transferred anywhere.

How we built it

We leverage heavily on the Lens Ecosystem, where at least the job poster needs to have generated profile to create the job ad. CreateProfiles on LensAnd by using defined data structures and GraphQL APIs (Subgraphs from the Graph and Lensnative subgraphs) we can build the job posting platform. Web3 connection happens via Coinbase, Metamask, or WalletConnect. We integrated the Ethereum Email Service email links of the contact persons. The data gets stored as JSONs to IPFS. The web app template is built with Next.js and is deployed and maintained using Fleek and IPFS. The mobile app is built via Flutter. The jobs are almost genuine and are sourced from Bankless. We also deployed Subgraphs from Graph to track both the main contract activity in Polygon Mainnet and Mumbai Testnet. These are the blockchains where Lens Protocol currently lives.

Challenges we ran into

We started dreaming about the project by building a smart contract-based system for the app to leverage Lens Protocol but its development is still gated. Instead of deployment of both Lens Protocol and the minor contract additions and huge potential work of creating social profiles, we build on Polygon Mainnet and present a version without the new smart contracts that were supposed to be added to where we would define new structs for defining job and organization for example. Other use cases for including the smart contracts were adding more new functional modules such as hiring and working. Also only one of the team members had access to the protocol as it still remains regulated. Using Flutter and not wanting to release the demo apps via Itunes or Google

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a really cool mobile version! We managed to build an end-to-end product that we believe is timely and can potentially bring new use cases for Web3. By thinking out of the box, we have contributed to a new a relatively topic in Web3 that is the social aspect.

What we learned

As we all are web3 newbies, we learned how to build around web3. We also began to appreciate how awesome the Lens Protocol idea is and how important modularity and composability are even in web3. And how we can utilize NFTs to express what we like by following and unfollowing others. We also learned that by utilizing powerful GraphQL APIs we can make apps that can bring more functionality and performance. We also learned that the web3 tooling for mobile apps is still very limited but much needed

What's next for Lensed-In

This Killer Web3 social app contributes to the social ecosystem that is being harbored around Lens Protocol. We have previously seen that making the ecosystem grow together is important and allows big leaps forward in development. More development and a test release could be planned once the smart contract development opportunities become available. Also, we are thinking about rewarding the users with NFTs for starting new jobs and also getting jobs done. Yet the major bottleneck is in the fact that we currently don't have the necessary funding to continue the project at a desirable pace. Thus the search for capital is crucial. Once Lensed-In grows it could positively contribute to the soul-bound and merit-based notions of becoming trustworthy citizens in the Web3 by allowing decentralized user profiles and user feeds and another aspect of verifiable history.