Yesterday DeFi firm Aave announced that it had raised a $15 million funding round for its Lens Protocol which aims to enable portable social profiles. General Catalyst led the round with a long list of high profile crypto backers. Surprisingly the text didn’t mention the participation of Tencent, the owner of China’s WeChat, one of the world’s largest social media companies. Only Meta’s properties and Youtube have larger audiences.
In today’s social media world, each social media platform holds the user’s data, their social graph, follower network and the content they create. This data is generally not portable, although Twitter plans to support some portability for creators. Lens Protocol aims to change that by providing a user controlled social profile on top of which numerous web3 decentralized apps can be built.
“People are driven to connect and share with others – be it news, photos, entertainment, opinions, etcetera,” said Stani Kulechov, founder of Lens Protocol. “Lens creates a more social, open, equitable and democratic internet – one that is secured by blockchain technology and governed by participants. By preserving digital identity and enabling portability, Lens alters the internet landscape.”
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