On December 18, Lens, a high-performance blockchain L2 network fostering decentralized consumer experiences, concluded a $31 million strategic funding round led by Lightspeed Faction. Additional participants included Alchemy, Avail, Circle, ConsenSys, DFG, Fabric Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Stellarcore, Superscript, Re7, and Wintermute Ventures, along with angel investors Anurag Arjun, Anton Bukov, Rune Christensen, Alex Gluchowski, Aleksander Leonard Larsen, Loi Luu, Spencer Noon, and Duncan Robinson.
This investment fuels the expansion of Lens Network’s scalability infrastructure, supporting the emergence of a new paradigm: SocialFi. With Lens, developers can create any on-chain use case, and its integrated social features make it uniquely suited for SocialFi applications.
SocialFi denotes the integration of social and finance within the decentralized landscape. By seamlessly incorporating social features into diverse applications, Lens enables users to build communities, foster collaboration, and explore new avenues for monetization. This empowers creators, influencers, and communities to leverage their social capital to generate revenue, participate in governance, and build sustainable economic models.
Stani Kulechov, founder of Lens, stated: "Existing L2s are still too costly for mainstream adoption. To bring Web3 SocialFi to the mainstream, we’re building the fastest, cheapest, and safest L2, where builders can create any on-chain use case. For participants, Lens will offer the best UX and multiple monetization opportunities to build their own financial rails. Plug-and-play SocialFi features can be used with any existing application, promoting engagement and making them more compelling. From a user perspective, there is familiar sign-on, free transactions, and seamless digital asset management. Lens delivers the ease of Web2 while providing unparalleled benefits that only blockchain can offer."
Samuel Harrison, Managing Partner at Lightspeed Faction, said: “We have been working closely with the Avara team for many years and are excited to double down and continue supporting this visionary team. Web2 social is increasingly broken, with opaque feed algorithms promoting click-bait content to sell ads. Decentralized SocialFi can solve this. Lens seamlessly integrates modular, fully customizable plug-and-play on-chain SocialFi features that can easily be added to any application. This powerful combination will fuel a new wave of on-chain projects that deliver an exceptional user experience on par with Web2 applications while also enabling new ownership and monetization options."
Lens prioritizes users by introducing gasless and signless transactions for effortless onboarding and seamless integration, removing barriers to mainstream adoption. This is aligned with Avara’s commitment to intuitive and simple design across all its products – Aave, Family, Lens, and developer dashboards. By emphasizing user experience and simple, seamless USD transactions, Lens ensures that users can easily and enjoyably engage with its ecosystem.
In May 2024, Lens previewed its Network capable of handling simultaneous instant transactions while ensuring data integrity. Initially, Lens will launch as an EVM-compatible Validium chain secured by Ethereum and transition, in a 3-phased rollout, to a Volition network built with zkSync’s ZK Stack – the modular, open-source framework based on the zkSync Era code. Leveraging zkSync for scalability and Avail for data availability, the Lens Network empowers developers to build innovative on-chain use cases previously not possible while delivering a superior user experience.
Last month, Lens unveiled Lens V3, a suite of powerful, modular, and customizable on-chain Social Features such as Accounts, Usernames, Graphs, Feeds, and Groups that can be individually integrated into any application. The mainnet launch of Lens Network and Social Features is planned for early 2025. Lens has secured various best-in-class partners such as Across Protocol, Alchemy, Chainlink, Dune, Safe, Tenderly, The Graph, and ThirdWeb and top-tier ecosystems, including Circle (USDC), ConsenSys (Metamask), Uniswap, and new social applications. Additionally, many current Lens V2 applications are migrating to V3, and Lens Protocol V2 will no longer receive new development support.
