Blue tickmark? Bronze tickmark, Silver tickmark and Gold tickmark as seen on Lensta.

Who to verify? How to verify? How much verification should cost? Should it be monetary in the social network landscape or not? These are just some of the questions that were brought up when Elon almost single-handedly decided to shake the state of verifications.

On Lens protocol, the noise around verifications has been much more subtle, but nevertheless, various apps have tried different approaches with different levels of success.

Most notably Lenster does have a hardcoded file with user ids that are verified on their web app. To be considered for the verification you have to fill out a form and then you might get added to the array of verified users or not. The great thing is that it is open source and in fact, at any given time you can see the list of Lenster verified users here.

Much more questions lie around the fact that user verifications with this approach are rather centralized and fairly subjective due to the nature of hand-picking them. The problem is not the intention here, but rather the fact that the responsibility lies in the hands of a single person or a couple of people and processes are pretty much black box.

Another issue that could come with this approach is that as network is growing, the number of verified users will also naturally grow and maintaining the hand picked list could be become challenge.

Most notably Orb has picked to take this route. While there are some downsides to not having verification at all, there are good aspects as well.

Firstly, it means that currently, all users have basically “even social status” within the app’s context, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Secondly, it also allows Orb founders to see what clicks and what doesn't with other apps when they decide to pursue verifications.

There are a few not-so-good aspects as well and primarily it is that while waiting on the sidelines and figuring out the best approach, other apps could already be riding the wave of verified accounts.

Most notably ( please read humbly ) Lensta has chosen this path, but there are other apps in the ecosystem that has done it as well. With this approach, we have managed to get rid of a lot of subjectivity and essentially make it “verify your account with a single transaction”. There are no questions as to why and how this user is verified, just on-chain transactions that prove that money is where the verification mark is.

I am extremely optimistic about the longevity of this approach as it is very simple and understandable for users as well as providing funds the business. There are of course potential issues that could arise, but due to ease of this model it will be much easier to tackle as there is very little subjectivity involved.

What are the Lensta verification numbers?

• 🥇 92 gold verifications for 2299,08 WMATIC

• 🥈 113 silver verifications for 779,7 WMATIC

• 🥉 281 bronze verifications or 840,19 WMATIC

Total verified numbers: 486 verified users and 3918,17 WMATIC

Here you can read more about how to verify on Lensta and try it out yourself as well.

There have been discussions around various other profile verification approaches like Worldcoin and some ZK solutions. They all seem cool, but it is way harder to explain these concepts than “pay to verify”.

For some of you, this dumbing down of verification might seem basic, but I strongly feel that a lot of users will just mostly care about ease of understanding and interaction with the verification process.

There are few ways to explain “pay to verify” simpler, but there are a ton of ways to explain how “Worldcoin” works simpler and why would it makes sense as a verification mechanism.

To this day I hold a very strong opinion of paid verifications being the way as it is creating an even rule set for everyone as well as providing funds for companies. It is easy to use and understand. At the same time I am always fascinated by the innovation in crypto and blockchain space and there might be something that comes out that beats paid verification, but until then “verify with an on-chain transaction” is a clear winner for me.