Mask Network, which claims to be one of the world’s leading decentralized social networks, has announced an investment in The Open Network (TON) in order “to further develop its ecosystem at large and provide innovative solutions for people across networks.”
Founded in 2017, Mask aims “to build an easy-to-use bridge between Web2 and Web3-era decentralized apps.”
Mask is one of the earliest community members of the Bluesky protocol “founded by Jack Dorsey, and the Mask team maintains the most active instances of Mastodon.”
Suji Yan, founder of Mask, said:
“Mask’s dream is to achieve a new and open internet through building and growing the decentralized social network ecosystem.”
TON is an innovative technology that “seeks to unite all blockchains and the Web2 internet into one open network.”
Designed by Telegram to onboard billions of users into Web3, TON has “been run as an open-source community project since 2020.” With strong social functions, TON’s goal is “to transform communities into economies.”
As noted in the update, Telegram’s newly released Fragment platform has been described by Telegram CEO Pavel Durov as “an amazing success” by selling anonymous numbers, as it gained them “more than US$50 million in sales in less than a month.”
Fragment is “built upon the TON blockchain, allowing users to obtain an anonymous number purchased via blockchain technology with payment in Toncoin.”
Similarly, Mask believes in “the ownership economy.”
Mask’s own Next.ID, is “a powerful open-sourced protocol that connects and authenticates people’s digital footprints, while giving them full ownership of their identities.”
Powered by Next.ID, Mask’s Web5.bio can “provide a list of relevant identities when people are searching any Twitter handle, Ethereum address, ENS domain or Lens Profile.”
There is shared synergy “between the two revolutionary groups’ visions.”
Mask will look “to achieve deeper integration and provide DID solutions for their combined communities and beyond, contributing to the future decentralized social networks ecosystem.”
Mask’s ambition is “to become the Web3 social conglomerate building for the first billion people in Web3.”
With accumulated funding of US$100 million, the Mask team “has strategically invested in decentralized social networks, infrastructure, and creative content.”
Beside building on TON, Mask has “acquired Pawoo.net, one of the largest Mastodon instances and has recently taken over the team of trendy NFT protocol RARA Social.”