Bitsocial and Blockchain Social Networks
Lens, DeSo and Steem each put social activity on a blockchain. Accounts, follows, posts or the rules around them become transactions that validators order and store. Bitsocial uses no blockchain: social media does not need a global order for every post, so Bitsocial skips consensus, gas and staking. See Peer-to-Peer Protocol for that reasoning.
What they have in common
- Someone pays for every write. Lens charges gas, which apps can sponsor; DeSo charges a fee on every action; Steem rations actions by staked tokens.
- The chain sets one spam policy for everyone. Fees, stake and account costs apply across the network instead of being chosen by each community.
- On-chain records are permanent. Apps can hide content, but they cannot remove it from the chain.
- Browsers are API clients. Web apps sign transactions and read through a node, indexer or API operated by someone else.
Lens
Lens runs on Lens Chain, an Ethereum layer 2 built with ZKsync's ZK Stack that uses Avail for data availability. Mask Network has stewarded Lens since January 2026.
- On the chain: accounts are smart contracts, usernames are NFTs inside namespaces, and graphs, groups, feeds and their rules are contracts too.
- Off the chain: a post's text and media live in a JSON file at a URI, usually on Grove, Lens's storage service in front of IPFS. Reactions and bookmarks are held by the Lens API, and apps read through that API.
- Spam and gates: transactions need gas in GHO, which apps can sponsor with rate limits. Feed and group rules can require token holdings or payments.
- Chain operation: L2BEAT rates Lens Chain as a Stage 0 validium with a centralized operator that can refuse to include transactions.
DeSo
DeSo is a layer-1 blockchain built for social apps. It moved from proof of work to proof of stake in July 2024.
- On the chain: profiles, posts, likes, follows and direct messages are all transactions stored by every full node. Images and video are hosted off-chain; the reference node uses Google Cloud Storage and Cloudflare Stream.
- Spam: every action pays a fee in DESO. New users usually get starter DESO from a node after phone verification.
- Moderation: each node decides what it shows by blacklisting or graylisting, but content stays on-chain.
- Communities: the docs describe no community or forum primitive; a "community" is a feed that an app curates.
- Running a node: validators need at least 32 GB of RAM and 200 GB of disk, according to the validator guide.
Steem
Steem is a social blockchain that pays authors and curators in tokens, with Steemit as its main blogging app. Hive split from Steem in 2020; according to Hive's whitepaper, the fork followed the sale of Steemit Inc. to Justin Sun.
- On the chain: text posts, comments, votes and their edit history, ordered by 21 elected witnesses producing a block every three seconds. Images are hosted off-chain.
- Spam: actions consume Resource Credits, which grow with staked STEEM. Creating an account costs STEEM; Steemit pays it for users who verify an email address and phone number.
- Communities: they are custom operations interpreted by an indexer outside consensus. Moderators can mute posts, which hides them in apps but leaves them on-chain.
- Rewards: inflation funds rewards, and stake-weighted votes decide how they are split, so large holders shape what earns attention.
Comparison
| Question | Lens | DeSo | Steem | Bitsocial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chain | Ethereum layer 2 (ZK Stack validium) | Own layer 1, proof of stake | Own chain, delegated proof of stake | None |
| Post content | Off-chain JSON, usually on Grove | On-chain text; media off-chain | On-chain text; images off-chain | On the community owner's node and the peers that read and seed it |
| Identity | Smart-contract account; username NFTs | Keypair with an on-chain profile | Named chain account with tiered keys | Ed25519 keypairs for users and communities |
| Communities | Groups and feeds as contracts with rules | No community primitive | Indexer-interpreted communities outside consensus | First-class objects whose node accepts or rejects posts |
| Spam control | Gas (often sponsored), token or payment rules | Fee on every action; starter funds after phone checks | Resource Credits from stake; paid account creation | Each community's challenge before a post is accepted |
| Moderation | Group admins, on-chain rules, API-level hiding | Each node filters what it shows | Community mutes, stake-weighted downvotes, app filters | Community owners moderate their community; apps choose what they show |
| Running it | Chain operator plus the Lens API and Grove | Validators with at least 32 GB RAM | Elected witnesses plus API and indexer nodes | A community node on consumer hardware, plus helper seeders |
| Main tradeoff | Programmable on-chain rules, but content and reads depend on Lens services | Open data pool, but every action costs a fee and stays forever | Built-in rewards, but stake shapes visibility and governance | No fees or stake, but no global ordering and old content is not guaranteed forever |