Aave Protocol Developer Raises $31M for Lens Blockchain

Avara Secures $31 Million to Advance Decentralized Social Networking

Avara, the organization responsible for Aave, Lens, and Family, has announced a new funding round totaling $31 million. Lightspeed Faction spearheaded this investment, which will fuel the development of Avara’s decentralized Layer 2 (L2) network.

This network is envisioned as a foundational infrastructure for the next generation of social and consumer applications. The core project, Lens, aims to redefine how users interact online.

Lens v3: A Protocol Overhaul

The funding announcement follows closely on the heels of Lens’s unveiling of a significantly updated protocol, Lens v3. This represents a major step forward in the project’s evolution.

Initially constructed on the Polygon blockchain, Lens v2 is already supporting a growing ecosystem of consumer applications. These include platforms like Zora, focused on NFT creation and sharing.

Other notable applications leveraging Lens v2 are Hey and Kaira, which function as Twitter-like social spaces, and Orb, an app designed for building and managing subcommunities.

The Drive for Decentralized Social Media

The ongoing efforts to establish a new, prominent social network within the cryptocurrency space are rooted in the principles of decentralization and user empowerment.

A key benefit of Lens-powered applications is user ownership of both identity and content. These applications act as interfaces for interacting directly with the blockchain itself.

The Avara team refers to these applications as clients, emphasizing their role as access points to the underlying decentralized network.

Users retain the freedom to seamlessly transition between different Lens-powered platforms if they are dissatisfied with changes or policies implemented by a specific provider.

Shifting the Power Dynamic

Traditional consumer social applications often utilize rewards programs and subscriptions to incentivize creators, but the governing rules are ultimately dictated by the platform owners.

“Social networks are inherently financial, yet the majority of that value currently flows from advertisers to the platform, leaving users with minimal benefit,” explained Avara founder Stani Kulechov in an interview with TechCrunch.

He further noted that users are often “locked into a proprietary database,” limiting their control and portability.

A User-Centric Model

A decentralized social application aims to reverse this model, prioritizing users and granting them greater control. This shift could foster more transparent revenue-sharing arrangements and improved rewards for content creators.

According to Kulechov, this approach “turns the model upside down where the users are more important, and they have more power than the platform itself.”

Social Network Foundations

Lens v3 is addressing a significant challenge facing web3 social platforms – the expense associated with transactions. Posting on a web3 platform necessitates a transaction signature on the underlying blockchain. Despite the progress made by layer-2 networks in reducing these costs in recent years, they still present an obstacle to widespread adoption by mainstream consumer applications.

Kulechov explained, “We initially deployed on Polygon, however, the network’s scalability proved insufficient for broad consumer use, where a single transaction might incur a cost of a fraction of a cent.” This realization led to the selection of a technology stack designed to leverage the advantages of Ethereum.

All transactions occurring on the Lens Network are now processed, bundled with ZK proofs, and then submitted to Ethereum.

Currently, the Lens network utilizes ZKsync as its foundational technology, alongside validiums. Validiums represent an off-chain transaction method, differing from solutions like Base or Arbitrum, and enabling significantly reduced transaction fees.

“This approach allows for the creation of transactions that are considerably more affordable than those offered by current rollups, opening up new possibilities for consumer-focused applications,” Kulechov stated.

The goal is to align the cost of interacting with the Lens network with the expenses associated with cloud server usage. Developers should be empowered to cover these costs on behalf of their users. “Our vision is for blockchains to be freely accessible to users, mirroring the accessibility of the internet,” Kulechov added.

Lens is establishing a set of core “social primitives” that define the protocol’s fundamental characteristics. These include accounts, usernames, graphs, feeds, and groups.

Each user account has the capability to generate multiple usernames (usable across various applications) and initiate connections with other users, thereby constructing diverse graphs. Participation in groups is also supported.

A particularly noteworthy feature is the ability for developers to implement rules governing access to feeds (and the individual posts within them). For example, an event could be organized and an NFT distributed to attendees, creating a community accessible only to NFT holders.

Content access could also be restricted based on payment amounts. This enables the creation of subscriber-only feeds or posts through token gating – essentially a “web3 Substack” model.

Regarding content moderation, Kulechov advocates for a protocol that remains as neutral as possible. Moderation responsibilities should then reside at the application level.

The mainnet launch of Lens v3 is planned for sometime during the first quarter of 2025. It will be crucial to observe whether this protocol upgrade can significantly impact the landscape of decentralized social networks, which currently remain largely niche.

The funding round, led by Lightspeed Faction, also saw participation from Alchemy, Avail, Circle, Consensys, DFG, Fabric Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Stellarcore, Superscript, Re7, and Wintermute Ventures. Angel investors included Anurag Arjun, Anton Bukov, Rune Christensen, Alex Gluchowski, Aleksander Leonard Larsen, Loi Luu, Spencer Noon, and Duncan Robinson.