Lens protocol, a web3 product aimed at creating a decentralized social networking ecosystem, has raised $15 million, the team told JS exclusively. The protocol is being built by Aave, a web3 technology company, which allows users to borrow and borrow crypto tokens from each other (Aave has a known $49 million to date.)
The protocol seeks to integrate the best of the web as we know it, but with a focus on the new innovations web3 to make the internet “more just, fair and democratic for social media networks,” said Stani Kulechov, CEO of Aave.
Kulechov said it is important that future infrastructure for the internet and social media networks is not in the hands of big entities like Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. When there is a powerful incumbent, it creates less control for users and also less choice, not just in web3 or on the internet, but in every industry.
The goal of the recently flushed Lens Protocol is to give individual users more control over their data and how it is shared, according to Kulechov. “We want to build a social media network that not only benefits users, but also everyone who contributes to it, such as developers.”
The $15 million Lens raised will be used to expand the protocol’s ecosystem and continue its development, Kulechov said. No appraisal is available.
The new round of funding was led by IDEO CoLab Ventures with participation from venture capital firms such as General Catalyst, Varian and Blockchain Capital, as well as DAOs such as Flamingo DAO, DAOJones, Punk DAO, DAO5 and Global Coin Research.
Angel investors were also involved, including Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams, OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah, entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan, Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget, and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, among others.
Lens has been in beta since May 2022 and has granted access to a handful of users so far. “Our roadmap will remain in beta for some time and in the future our goal is to fully open protocol access, but for that to happen the infrastructure and ecosystem will need to grow further,” said Kulechov.
It hopes to be a “neutral and flexible” protocol that will allow developers to build a variety of use cases ranging from gaming to social media, according to the CEO. And a number of desktop and mobile applications are currently being built by developers such as orb, Reef And Enso collectivenoted Kulekhov.
“We are populating the ecosystem with applications familiar to traditional social media, [and] we envision a future where all these applications and algorithms generate revenue from different usage scenarios and functions,” he said.
In the long run, Kulechov hopes the protocol will solve problems faced by both social media users and businesses, not only in the crypto space, but also in general markets. “We don’t have all the answers, but that’s the beauty of web3, it’s an environment where everyone can contribute and that’s where we want to go.”
“What is most valuable to us is that we want to create a protocol that is open to contributions,” Kulechov said. “A protocol where we can’t make all the decisions for users and developers, where we can have an open platform and discuss how Lens Protocol can evolve in the future.”
There are other crypto social networks like BitClout, which has built more than 200 applications on its blockchain DeSo according to his website, among other things. There are also crypto wallets and applications like Thred, which focus on a service similar to Yelp and offer user-friendly interfaces. While they have gained some traction from crypto players and users, there seems to be little intentional initiative to grow beyond the ecosystem so far.
It’s important to distinguish between networks and protocols – Lens builds the latter, meaning any developer can build on top of their system. Lens is similar to existing Internet protocols such as HTTPs, IP protocol or email, Kulechov said. JS considers it similar to a platform, in traditional web terms.
For web3 social protocols and networks to really gain acceptance, they need to create accessible options that can appeal to a larger, more diverse, and less crypto insider community. Whether Lens – or any other team – can pull off this feat is yet to be determined.
