Exploring the Top Lens Chain Apps
There's never been a better time to explore and support subversive apps.
Apps where users are in control of their data, feeds, etc. and not massive corporations whose only north star is profits.
That said, in the onchain social scene, the Lens ecosystem is one early and rising bright spot here, as it's a growing hub where user-first projects are the standard and not exceptions.
The underlying infra fuels the empowering utilities of Lens apps, like portable profiles and creator monetization. The main pillars to know include:
📱 Lens V3
Lens V3 is the ecosystem's foundational SocialFi protocol, which offers a suite of onchain "social legos," i.e. modular Social Primitives like Accounts, Usernames, Feeds, Groups, etc., that builders can use to quickly build customized Lens apps.
⛓️ Lens Chain
Optimized to handle large amounts of social transactions, Lens Chain is an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) that uses Avail for data availability and is built atop ZKsync's tech stack. It serves as a base for deploying Lens apps and offers them open financial railing for payments, tipping, collecting, etc.
🪴 Grove
Grove is Lens’s bepsoke storage layer, though it's chain agnostic and can operate across Ethereum, Base, ZKsync, and beyond. Instead of handing your posts and images to big tech servers, Grove uses IPFS and the EVM to track who owns each file and allows only authorized wallets to change or delete data.
🪙 GHO
GHO is Aave's decentralized dollar-pegged stablecoin. Instead of being backed by cash deposits, the token is supported by the range of onchain assets supplied as collateral within Aave's liquidity protocol. GHO is the gas token of Lens Chain and has been used in more than 3.7 million transactions on the network to date.
The combination of these pillars makes for a one-of-a-kind social stack that a growing cast of Lens apps are making the most of.
Before you can dive into the app ecosystem here, though, you'll need to onboard to Lens and bridge some GHO over to Lens Chain so you can pay for transactions. Fortunately, both of these steps are straightforward.
For onboarding, head to onboarding.lens.xyz and click "Create Account" if you're starting anew. Alternatively, press the provided "Update" option if you already have a Lens account from the previous Lens V2 system.
Either way, after you're done with your setup flow, you can acquire some GHO on Ethereum via Uniswap and bridge into Lens Chain using Across. It's also possible to bridge straight from ETH on Ethereum into GHO on Lens Chain using gas.zip.
With these initial steps out of the way, you'd be ready to begin exploring Lens apps. Where should you focus your attention, then?
I recommend starting with the most popular Lens apps today. These early hotspots include:
🌞 Hey
Hey (hey.xyz) is the largest social media app on Lens Chain, boasting the most daily posting activity on the network by far right now.
- With regard to UX, it provides a platform in the ballpark of X/Bluesky/Farcaster, though it notably stands out from the pack in allowing posts to be natively collected.
- The team recently unveiled its Hey Pro premium plan, which costs 20 GHO a year and allows advanced features like editing posts, monetized profiles, and more.
🤳 Soclly
Soccly (app.soclly.com) is a web3 social aggregator platform that currently facilitates the most daily posting activity on Lens behind Hey.
- It's an aggregator, as the team is working on rolling out support for crossposting across Lens and Farcaster simultaneously.
- In the meantime, Soccly offers Lens users various unique features, like voice-to-text posts, automated audio summaries, and taking and sharing pictures directly in-app.
🔮 Orb
Orb (orb.club) is another one of the leading social media apps on Lens Chain and is close behind Soccly in posting activity at the moment.
- The platform is mobile-centric and emphasizes club-based communities. Its Sticker Shop and sticker packs are also nice additions.
- Notably, Orb was recently acquired by MaskDAO, bringing it under Mask's umbrella of projects including Firefly and Next.ID.
✍️ Fountain
Fountain (fountain.ink) is an onchain blogging platform, like Mirror or Paragraph, but native to Lens Chain.
- That said, compared to other Lens apps, this platform is best-suited for longform writing. It supports collaborative editing and revenue splits so it's great for groups, too.
- Keep in mind that Fountain and Lens are currently running a summer writing contest through July 6th featuring a top prize of 500 GHO. Worth a shot!
Additionally, if you find yourself interested in the crossroads of crypto and AI, consider checking out Bonsai (app.onbons.ai), another popular Lens app.
The team recently released Bonsai Smart Media, a platform for creating, remixing, and earning via AI agents. Check out this rundown that my colleague David C. recently wrote if you want to dive in deeper here:
David C Apr 18, 2025 • 5 min read
Lastly, note that Avara is the parent company behind Aave, GHO, Lens, and the Family wallet. If you're not familiar with it, Family offers really slick UX and natively supports signing into Lens apps, so you might find it's the most streamlined way to explore the Lens ecosystem.
Up to you, of course, but trying these apps is also an opportunity to check out Family if you haven't already!