Lens, the blockchain L2 network empowering decentralized consumer experiences, closed a $31 million round led by Lightspeed Faction.
Additional participants in the investment round reportedly include the following: Alchemy, Avail, Circle, Consensys, DFG, Fabric Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Stellarcore, Superscript, Re7, and Wintermute Ventures, as well as angel investors Anurag Arjun, Anton Bukov, Rune Christensen, Alex Gluchowski, Aleksander Leonard Larsen, Loi Luu, Spencer Noon, and Duncan Robinson.
This investment accelerates the expansion of Lens Network’s scaling infrastructure, supporting the “emergence of a new paradigm” called: SocialFi.
With Lens, devs can build any onchain use case, while its integrated Social Features make it “suited for SocialFi applications.”
SocialFi represents the convergence of social and finance “within the decentralized landscape.”
By integrating social features into applications, Lens enables users to build communities, foster collaboration, and “unlock 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 onchain use case. For participants, Lens will offer the best UX and multiple monetization opportunities to build their own financial rails.”
Samuel Harrison, Managing Partner, Lightspeed Faction, said:
“We have been working closely with the Avara team for many years and we’re excited to double down and continue to support 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 makes users the priority by introducing gasless and signless transactions for “effortless” onboarding and integration, removing “barriers to mainstream adoption.”
This is aligned with Avara’s commitment to intuitive design “across all of its products – Aave, Family, Lens, and developer dashboards.”
By emphasizing user experience, and simple USD transactions, Lens ensures that users can easily “engage with the Lens ecosystem.”
In May 2024, Lens previewed the Lens Network, which can reportedly handle simultaneous “instant transactions while ensuring data integrity.”
Initially, Lens will launch as an EVM-compatible Validium chain secured by Ethereum and convert, 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 devs to build onchain use cases that “were previously not possible, while delivering a superior user experience.”
This past month, Lens unveiled Lens V3, a suite of on-chain Social Features such as Accounts, Usernames, Graphs, Feeds, and Groups that can be individually plugged into any application.
The mainnet launch of Lens Network and Social Feature is “scheduled for early 2025.”
Lens has secured a variety of partners such “as Across Protocol, Alchemy, Chainlink, Dune, Safe, Tenderly, The Graph, and ThirdWeb and top-tier ecosystems, including Circle (USDC), Consensys (Metamask), Uniswap, as well as new social applications.”
In addition, many of the current Lens v2 applications are “migrating to v3.”
Lens Protocol v2 will “no longer be actively supported” by new developments.