Lens

Monad @monad · 1d

Lens (@LC) is coming to Monad

Rebuilt from the ground up as a fully onchain social graph:
• You own your account and connections
• Anyone can build a client
• You decide what your feed shows

Lens and Farcaster users can sign in with existing accounts

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StarPlatinum Verified account @StarPlatinum_ · Nov 2

Elon Musk took a $40,000 username from a guy who had owned it for 16 years.

He paid him absolutely nothing.
Not even a dollar.

Instead, he was offered a T-shirt and a tour of Twitter’s headquarters.

This is the story of Gene X. Hwang the first @X username

2007

- photographer from San Francisco
- co-founder of Orange Photography
- registers @x on Twitter
- keeps the username for 16 years

over the years

account grows to ~53,000 followers
receives offers of up to $40,000 for the handle

But he refuses to sell

2014

- hackers steal his x account
- Twitter helps him recover it

July 23, 2023

- Elon Musk announces Twitter will become X
- Gene is in Canada playing in a pinball tournament

He has no idea what’s coming

July 25, 2023

- Twitter officially becomes X
- the company wants x
- Gene receives an email from Twitter support

“Your user handle is affiliated with X Corp.”

his username is taken and gets a new one @x12345678998765

what X offers him

- company merchandise
- exclusive tour of X headquarters
- meeting with the management team

$0.

Gene even asks if he can have the old blue Twitter bird sign being removed from headquarters.

they say no.

October 2025

X launches its Handle Marketplace
rare usernames can cost $2,500 to over $1 MILLION

users must maintain a paid subscription
lose the subscription, potentially lose the handle

the same company that took x without paying its owner now charges people for access to rare usernames.

16 years building an identity.

$40,000 in offers rejected.

and all he got was an offer of merchandise and an office tour.

BROTHER.

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