In the discussion of distribution of Lens handles there are two big camps of thinking, “Do we allow minting of permanent or rentable profiles?” It has become quite obvious that there are serious trade-offs with each one, permanent profiles lend risk to hoarding, spam, and bots at any price that would be reasonable for the average user to pay. Rent-based lens profiles come with the risk of a severe disincentive to new users.

Here's my new suggestion for the feature:

I call this method "The Evolutionary Tree"

What is a seed?

There should be a moderately governed body of lens that are free to mint. These free to mint profiles, or what I call seeds make it extremely easy to onboard and should come with the same amount of data ownership with one caveat, they should be audited by multiple daos like cultivator dao to essentially delete or revoke ownership. Essentially seeds should be permanent profiles with social graph ownership that carry the risk of being deleted, burned, or repossessed. If a seed is active for 2 years in block time, it should be able to have the optionality to mint a seedling at a discount with that discount increasing linearly over time.

What is a seedling?

A seedling is a rentable lens profile that has no governing body over censoring bots or spam, but provides a greater sense of ownership. It generates revenue and disincentives bots and hoards. After a decent amount of time, my suggestion is 5-10 years, a permanent profile or tree is mint able providing all the functionality and ownership of the current iteration of the lens profile.

What is a tree?

A tree is the current iteration of the lens profile that can be either bought or earned through usage over time. A tree is always opt-in similar to a seedling and does not have to be ascertained through proof-of-humanity though the incentives should make that the case. Also, unlike seeds and seedlings a tree is permanent severely increasing scarcity. So, in order to provide a good user experience, there should be generations of seeds meaning every 20 years or so a new class of lens permanent profiles are mint able, locking the last set from being minted.

Other notes:

I would suggest, seeds should be free, to mint a seeding without a seed should cost 10 MATIC + 2 per year, and a Tree should cost somewhere in the range of 100-200 MATIC without a proper seedling. Also, to guard against farming, for a grown seedling to mint a tree it should not have moved wallets and after minted it should be locked for 1 year.

While I am fairly certain all this is technically feasible, I am no expert. It surely would take a decent amount of additional code. I would presume seeds and seedlings could be built on top of the pre-existing protocol, but the different generations of trees would need to be added. There would also need to be a large update to front ends through middle-ware likely that basically coordinates the seed, seedling, and tree follow nfts to all point to whatever profile is needed. During each upgrade there would also need to be an airdropping mechanism of the new follow nfts for the new type of profile. There is a lot of complexity that this model of profile distribution has, but I like the optionality, accessibility and security this model adds. It also allows you to take all the current profiles and consider them tree generation 1 or beta or some better name and have a fair open market when it launches out of beta.

In the discussion of distribution of Lens handles there are two big camps of thinking, “Do we allow minting of permanent or rentable profiles?” It has become quite obvious that there are serious trade-offs with each one, permanent profiles lend risk to hoarding, spam, and bots at any price that would be reasonable for the average user to pay. Rent-based lens profiles come with the risk of a severe disincentive to new users.

Here's my new suggestion for the feature:

I call this method "The Evolutionary Tree"

What is a seed?

There should be a moderately governed body of lens that are free to mint. These free to mint profiles, or what I call seeds make it extremely easy to onboard and should come with the same amount of data ownership with one caveat, they should be audited by multiple daos like cultivator dao to essentially delete or revoke ownership. Essentially seeds should be permanent profiles with social graph ownership that carry the risk of being deleted, burned, or repossessed. If a seed is active for 2 years in block time, it should be able to have the optionality to mint a seedling at a discount with that discount increasing linearly over time.

What is a seedling?

A seedling is a rentable lens profile that has no governing body over censoring bots or spam, but provides a greater sense of ownership. It generates revenue and disincentives bots and hoards. After a decent amount of time, my suggestion is 5-10 years, a permanent profile or tree is mint able providing all the functionality and ownership of the current iteration of the lens profile.

What is a tree?

A tree is the current iteration of the lens profile that can be either bought or earned through usage over time. A tree is always opt-in similar to a seedling and does not have to be ascertained through proof-of-humanity though the incentives should make that the case. Also, unlike seeds and seedlings a tree is permanent severely increasing scarcity. So, in order to provide a good user experience, there should be generations of seeds meaning every 20 years or so a new class of lens permanent profiles are mint able, locking the last set from being minted.

Other notes:

I would suggest, seeds should be free, to mint a seeding without a seed should cost 10 MATIC + 2 per year, and a Tree should cost somewhere in the range of 100-200 MATIC without a proper seedling. Also, to guard against farming, for a grown seedling to mint a tree it should not have moved wallets and after minted it should be locked for 1 year.

While I am fairly certain all this is technically feasible, I am no expert. It surely would take a decent amount of additional code. I would presume seeds and seedlings could be built on top of the pre-existing protocol, but the different generations of trees would need to be added. There would also need to be a large update to front ends through middle-ware likely that basically coordinates the seed, seedling, and tree follow nfts to all point to whatever profile is needed. During each upgrade there would also need to be an airdropping mechanism of the new follow nfts for the new type of profile. There is a lot of complexity that this model of profile distribution has, but I like the optionality, accessibility and security this model adds. It also allows you to take all the current profiles and consider them tree generation 1 or beta or some better name and have a fair open market when it launches out of beta.