After Farcaster's Pivot, Lens Protocol Changes Hands, Leaving the Dream of Web3 Social in Shambles

marsbitPublished on 2026-01-21Last updated on 2026-01-21

Abstract

Following Farcaster's pivot, Lens Protocol has been taken over by Mask Network, marking another major shift in the decentralized social space. Lens, originally created by Aave founder Stani Kulechov in 2022, was designed to challenge data monopolies by storing social graphs on-chain via NFTs. Despite raising over $46 million and developing technical solutions like its own chain on ZKsync, Lens struggled with user engagement. With 647,000 profiles but only about 45,000 weekly active users, it became clear that growth was driven largely by airdrop speculation rather than genuine social interaction. The original team, strong in DeFi but weaker in consumer product experience, is stepping back to an advisory role. Mask Network, which focuses on bridging Web2 and Web3 social ecosystems, will now manage Lens. This transition underscores broader challenges in decentralized social platforms, where financial incentives often overshadow real social use cases, fragmenting the original vision of disrupting traditional social media giants.

Author:zhou, ChainCatcher

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

Just last December, Farcaster announced a strategic pivot, abandoning its social-first strategy in favor of building a wallet-centric application model. The fact that two leading protocols adjusted their course in quick succession reflects, to some extent, the struggles and dilemmas of the entire decentralized social赛道.

It is reported that Lens Protocol was launched in early 2022 by Aave founder Stani Kulechov, who was prompted to build a system that challenges data垄断 and allows users to truly own their social relationships after being temporarily banned from a social platform due to言论 issues.

Lens's core is an on-chain social graph where user profiles, follow relationships, and content interactions exist as NFTs or on-chain data.

In terms of capital, according to RootData data, Lens Protocol has raised over $46 million cumulatively, with investors including Tencent, Robot Ventures, Wintermute, Circle Ventures, and Variant Fund. It was previously rumored to be planning a new funding round at a valuation of $500 million.

Over the past few years of development, Lens transitioned from the Polygon testnet to the mainnet, and achieved modular functionality through its V2 version in 2023. With the entry into a fully permissionless phase in 2024, and the落地 of its dedicated chain Lens Chain based on ZKsync in 2025, the protocol addressed the technical bottleneck of high transaction costs.

However, technical success did not translate into生态繁荣. According to Coingecko data, the protocol currently has a total of 665,000 NFTs, held by 575,000 unique holders, with a total market capitalization of $138,000.

Previously, the Lens official team mentioned in a migration announcement that in February 2025, the protocol had approximately 647,000 minted Profile accounts, with累计发布数 reaching 31 million, but weekly active users were only about 45,000. This means that most of the hundreds of thousands of accounts were likely registered early on to speculate on potential airdrops, with genuinely active users engaging in high-quality interactions being a minority.

This also reflects the shortcomings of the original Lens team. They might have had an edge in DeFi protocol design and smart contract governance, but their experience in polishing consumer-grade products was relatively weak. Stani stated that the management权 of Lens would be handed over to Mask Network, while the original team would transition to technical advisors, returning to their area of expertise in DeFi innovation.

As the接手方, Mask Network has long focused on bridging Web2 and Web3 social networks. It was founded in 2018 by Suji Yan, with the aim of allowing users to enjoy secure, decentralized social messaging, payment networks, file storage, and file sharing without leaving mainstream social media networks.

According to Rootdata data, Mask Network has raised over $57 million cumulatively, with investors including HashKey, Hash Global, DCG, YZi Labs, and others. It has launched its native governance token MASK, whose current FDV is approximately $60 million.

Currently, Mask旗下已拥有 the聚合 application Firefly, the identity protocol Next.ID, Web3.bio, and several other core components.

It is worth mentioning that as early as 2023, Mask Network participated in Lens's seed round of funding. It was an early supporter and生态 participant of Lens, and in 2025, it completed the strategic acquisition of Orb.club, a native social application on the Lens chain.

Mask founder Suji Yan stated that Mask's mission is to make decentralized social features easy to use and intuitive, which aligns with the next development stage of Lens.

However, for Mask, this might be an attempt to突围 at the application layer, but for the entire赛道, it is merely a清算 of the social dream.

Looking back over the past few years,所谓的流量爆发 were almost entirely driven by airdrop expectations and speculative博弈, not源于真实的交流需求.

SocialFi placed too much emphasis on the "Fi" and neglected the "Social". With the抽身 of the Lens founding team and the变道 of Farcaster, the grand narrative of Web3 social最初那个 "颠覆传统社交巨头" has already been shattered.

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