Timothy Morano
Jan 20, 2026 14:49
Mask Network assumes control of Lens Protocol from Avara, combining $100M venture arm with decentralized social infrastructure serving 50K+ monthly users.
Mask Network has officially taken over stewardship of Lens Protocol, the decentralized social infrastructure originally developed by Aave founder Stani Kulechov’s Avara team. The handoff marks a significant consolidation in the Web3 social sector, with Avara transitioning to an advisory role while Mask assumes operational control.
MASK currently trades at $0.63, up 0.78% over 24 hours, with a market cap of $63.2 million. The token spiked 25% on December 28 following its Coinbase listing.
What Mask Brings to the Table
Founded in 2017 by Suji Yan, Mask has quietly built one of the more extensive decentralized social portfolios in crypto. The team operates two of Mastodon’s largest instances—mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud—and acquired Pawoo.net in 2022, giving them significant presence in the 1.9 million monthly active user Mastodon ecosystem.
The company’s venture arm, Bonfire Union, manages $100 million across two funds with investments in over 120 projects spanning decentralized social, infrastructure, and creator economies. Mask positions itself as the “Tencent of Web3″—a network of interoperable social products rather than a single platform.
The Orb Acquisition Completes the Stack
MaskDAO recently acquired Orb, a Web3-native social app built on Lens that crossed 50,000 monthly active users by early 2025. Orb pioneered viral mechanics like stickerpacks, collectibles, and competitions with creator-first monetization—exactly the consumer-facing layer Lens was missing.
“Lens proved the infrastructure. Orb proves what’s possible on top of it,” Yan said. “MaskDAO exists to take decentralized social out of the lab and into everyday life.”
The combined product suite now includes Next.ID, Web3.bio, and Firefly.social, which has integrated with Fileverse, Snapshot, Polymarket, Mirror, and Paragraph. Vitalik Buterin has publicly praised Firefly’s user experience.
Why This Matters for DeSoc
Lens spent years proving that user-owned social networks could actually function at scale—a thesis many dismissed as impractical. The protocol evolved from community experiment to production-ready infrastructure capable of supporting consumer-grade applications.
“What the ecosystem needs next isn’t more protocols—it’s great consumer products,” the announcement noted. Kulechov will remain as advisor, with both teams betting that social and DeFi will increasingly merge into what they’re calling “the economic layer of the internet.”
For traders watching the DeSoc sector, this consolidation puts Mask at the center of a vertically integrated stack spanning protocol infrastructure, consumer apps, and venture capital—a rare combination in the fragmented Web3 social space.
Image source: Shutterstock
Source: https://blockchain.news/news/mask-network-lens-protocol-stewardship-decentralized-social
