Author: zhou, ChainCatcher
1 Month 20 Day,Mask Network Announce the takeover of a decentralized social protocol. Lens Protocol. This is followed by Farcaster After that, another decentralized social platform announced a shift in its development focus.
Just last year 12 Month,Farcaster Announced a strategic transformation, abandoning the social-first strategy in favor of building a wallet-centric application model. Two leading protocols have successively adjusted their course in a short period, reflecting to some extent the indecision and struggles of the entire decentralized social networking sector.
It is reported that,Lens Protocol is composed of Aave Founder Stan Kulechov In 2022 Launched at the beginning of the year, at that time Stan! Being temporarily banned by a social platform due to his remarks prompted him to build a system that challenges data monopolies and enables users to truly own their social relationships.
Lens At its core is an on-chain social graph, where user profiles, follow relationships, and content interactions are all recorded. NFT or in the form of on-chain data.
At the capital level, according to... RootData Data,Lens Protocol The total amount raised has exceeded 4600 million U.S. dollars, with investors including Tencent,Robot Ventures、Wintermute、Circle Ventures and Variant Fund Previously, there were reports that plans had been made to... 5 Raise a new round of financing with a valuation of hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the development of the past few years,Lens Experienced from Polygon is a blockchain platform that provides a framework for The transition from the testnet to the mainnet, and in 2023 Annual throughput V2 Modularize the features of the version implementation. As the version progresses, 2024 entering the fully license-free phase in the year, as well as 2025 Year-based ZKsync is a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum that uses zero-knowledge proofs (Z 's dedicated chain Lens Chain The agreement addresses the technical bottleneck of high transaction costs.
However, the technical feasibility has not translated into a thriving ecosystem. According to... CoinGecko Data, currently this protocol has a total of66.5Ten thousand NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token., by 57.5 Held by ten thousand individual holders, the total market value is 13.8 ten thousand US dollars.
Previously,Lens The official migration announcement mentioned that,2025 Year 2 The agreement has approximately 64.7 Number of tokens minted Profile Account, total number of posts reaches 3100 Ten thousand, but the monthly active users are only about 4.5 Ten thousand. This means that among the hundreds of thousands of accounts, many were likely registered early on in an attempt to gain potential airdrops, while the proportion of truly active users generating high-quality engagement is very small.
This also reflects that Lens The shortcomings of the original team—they might be in DeFi They are slightly better in protocol design and smart contract governance, but relatively lack experience in refining consumer-grade products.Stan! indicates that will Lens transfer the management rights to Mask Network, while the original team will transition into technical consultants, returning to their areas of expertise. DeFi Innovate in the field.
As the acquiring party,Mask Network Long-term focus on connectivity Web2 refers to the second generation of the World Wide Web, characterized by and Web3 social bridging, which is located in 2018 Year by year Suji Yan Founded with the aim of allowing users to enjoy a secure, decentralized social messaging, payment network, file storage, and file sharing without leaving mainstream social media platforms.
According to Rootdata The data shows that,Mask Network Total financing exceeds 5700 million U.S. dollars, with investors including HashKey、Hash Global、DCG is an abbreviation that can have different meanings、YZi Labs and launched native governance tokens. MASKCurrently FDV Approximately 6000 ten thousand US dollars.
Currently,Mask Already owns Firefly Aggregation application,Next.ID Identity Protocol,Web3.bio and several other core components.
It is worth mentioning that as early as 2023 Year Mask Network participated Lens the seed round financing,itsOriginally is Lens early supporters and ecosystem participants,2025 The year also completed the acquisition of Lens Chain-native social application Orb.club strategic acquisition.
Mask Founder Yan Suji indicates that,Mask The mission is to make decentralized social features easy to use and intuitive, which aligns with Lens coincides with the next stage of development.
However, for Mask For the company in question, this might be an attempt to break through at the application layer, but for the entire industry, it's merely a reckoning with the dream of social networking.
Looking back at the past few years, so-called traffic surges have almost entirely been driven by expectations of airdrops and speculative games, rather than stemming from real communication needs.
SocialFi refers to the integration of social media and finance, leveraging blockchain technology Overemphasize"Fi" is a word that can have multiple meanings depending on the contextbut ignored"Social"With the advancement of Lens The withdrawal of the founding team and Farcaster lane change,Web3 The initial stage of social interaction."Hello, how areDisrupting Traditional Social Media Giants"Please enter a validThe grand narrative has already become fragmented.