继 Farcaster 转型后 Lens Protocol 迎来易主，Web3 社交梦连渣都不剩 - ChainCatcher

Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

On January 20th, Mask Network announced the takeover of the decentralized social protocol Lens Protocol. This is another decentralized social platform, following Farcaster, that has announced a shift in its development focus.

Last December, Farcaster announced a strategic transformation, abandoning its social-first approach in favor of building a wallet-centered application model. The two leading protocols have successively adjusted their course in a short period, reflecting the overall struggle and dilemma within the decentralized social track.

According to reports, Lens Protocol was launched in early 2022 by Aave founder Stani Kulechov. At that time, Stani was briefly banned from social platforms due to speech issues, which prompted him to build a system that challenges data monopolies and allows users to truly own their social relationships.

The core of Lens is a set of on-chain social graphs, where user profiles, follow relationships, and content interactions are stored as NFTs or on-chain data.

On the capital side, according to RootData, Lens Protocol has raised over $46 million, with investors including Tencent, Robot Ventures, Wintermute, Circle Ventures, and Variant Fund. There were previous reports of a new funding round valuing the project at $500 million.

Over the past few years, Lens has experienced a transition from Polygon testnet to mainnet, and in 2023, it achieved modular functionality through version V2. As 2024 marks the fully permissionless phase and the Lens Chain, a dedicated chain based on ZKsync, is implemented in 2025, the protocol addresses the technical bottleneck of high transaction costs.

However, technical success has not translated into ecological prosperity. According to Coingecko data, the protocol currently has 665,000 NFTs held by 575,000 unique holders, with a total market value of $138,000.

Previously, Lens official mentioned in its migration announcement that as of February 2025, the protocol had approximately 647,000 minted Profile accounts, with a total of 31 million posts, but only about 45,000 weekly active users. This indicates that most of the accounts are likely early registrations aimed at potential airdrops, and the proportion of active users generating high-quality interactions is very small.

This also highlights the shortcomings of the original Lens team. They may excel in DeFi protocol design and smart contract governance but have relatively limited experience in refining consumer-grade products. Stani stated that the management rights of Lens would be transferred to Mask Network, while the original team would become technical advisors, returning to their expertise in DeFi innovation.

As the acquirer, Mask Network has long focused on connecting Web2 and Web3 through social bridging. Founded in 2018 by Suji Yan, it aims to enable users to enjoy secure, decentralized social messaging, payment networks, file storage, and sharing without leaving mainstream social media platforms.

According to Rootdata, Mask Network has raised over $57 million, with investors including HashKey, Hash Global, DCG, YZi Labs, and others. It has also launched its native governance token MASK, with a current FDV of about $60 million.

Currently, Mask owns several core components, including the Firefly aggregation app, Next.ID identity protocol, and Web3.bio.

Notably, Mask Network participated in Lens’s seed round back in 2023, being an early supporter and ecosystem participant of Lens. In 2025, it also completed a strategic acquisition of Lens Chain’s native social app Orb.club.

Mask founder Suji Yan stated that Mask’s mission is to make decentralized social functions easy to use and intuitive, aligning with Lens’s next development stage.

However, for Mask, this may be an application-layer breakout attempt, but for the entire track, it is merely a liquidation of the social dream.

Looking back over the past few years, the so-called traffic explosion has almost been driven by airdrop expectations and speculative play, rather than genuine communication needs.

SocialFi has overly emphasized “Fi” while neglecting “Social.” With the withdrawal of Lens’s founding team and Farcaster’s change of course, the grand narrative of Web3 social “disrupting traditional social giants” has already fragmented.