Timothy Morano
Jan 20, 2026 14:49
Masks Community assumes management of Lens Protocol from Avara, combining $100M enterprise arm with decentralized social infrastructure serving 50K+ month-to-month customers.
Masks Community has formally taken over stewardship of Lens Protocol, the decentralized social infrastructure initially developed by Aave founder Stani Kulechov’s Avara crew. The handoff marks a big consolidation within the Web3 social sector, with Avara transitioning to an advisory position whereas Masks assumes operational management.
MASK at present trades at $0.63, up 0.78% over 24 hours, with a market cap of $63.2 million. The token spiked 25% on December 28 following its Coinbase itemizing.
What Masks Brings to the Desk
Based in 2017 by Suji Yan, Masks has quietly constructed one of many extra in depth decentralized social portfolios in crypto. The crew operates two of Mastodon’s largest situations—mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud—and purchased Pawoo.web in 2022, giving them vital presence within the 1.9 million month-to-month energetic person Mastodon ecosystem.
The corporate’s enterprise arm, Bonfire Union, manages $100 million throughout two funds with investments in over 120 tasks spanning decentralized social, infrastructure, and creator economies. Masks positions itself because the “Tencent of Web3″—a community of interoperable social merchandise moderately than a single platform.
The Orb Acquisition Completes the Stack
MaskDAO not too long ago acquired Orb, a Web3-native social app constructed on Lens that crossed 50,000 month-to-month energetic customers by early 2025. Orb pioneered viral mechanics like stickerpacks, collectibles, and competitions with creator-first monetization—precisely the consumer-facing layer Lens was lacking.
“Lens proved the infrastructure. Orb proves what’s doable on prime of it,” Yan mentioned. “MaskDAO exists to take decentralized social out of the lab and into on a regular basis life.”
The mixed product suite now contains Subsequent.ID, Web3.bio, and Firefly.social, which has built-in with Fileverse, Snapshot, Polymarket, Mirror, and Paragraph. Vitalik Buterin has publicly praised Firefly’s person expertise.
Why This Issues for DeSoc
Lens spent years proving that user-owned social networks might really perform at scale—a thesis many dismissed as impractical. The protocol developed from neighborhood experiment to production-ready infrastructure able to supporting consumer-grade functions.
“What the ecosystem wants subsequent is not extra protocols—it is nice client merchandise,” the announcement famous. Kulechov will stay as advisor, with each groups betting that social and DeFi will more and more merge into what they’re calling “the financial layer of the web.”
For merchants watching the DeSoc sector, this consolidation places Masks on the middle of a vertically built-in stack spanning protocol infrastructure, client apps, and enterprise capital—a uncommon mixture within the fragmented Web3 social house.
Picture supply: Shutterstock
