Avara, the team behind Aave, Lens, and Family, just secured $31 million in funding. This round was led by Lightspeed Faction. With Lens, Avara aims to create a decentralized protocol that will serve as the backbone for social and consumer applications.
This news comes shortly after the launch of Lens v3, which brings significant updates to the protocol. Initially built on the Polygon blockchain, Lens v2 has already been used by several consumer apps. These include Zora, an NFT creation and sharing platform, as well as Twitter-like services such as Hey and Kaira, and the community-focused app Orb.
So, why are crypto developers so eager to create the next big social network? It’s all about decentralization and putting users first. Many consumer social apps reward creators through incentive programs and subscriptions. But, the companies running these platforms often set the rules.
Stani Kulechov, founder of Avara, shared his thoughts with TechCrunch. He pointed out that social networks today are very financialized. A lot of the financial value flows from advertisers to the platforms, leaving users with very little. He also mentioned that users often feel trapped in specific databases.
A decentralized social app could flip this model on its head. It would empower users, giving them more control than the platform itself. This could lead to clearer revenue-sharing agreements and better rewards for creators.
With Lens v3, Avara is tackling one of the biggest challenges in web3 social platforms: transaction costs. When you post on a web3 platform, you need to sign a transaction on the blockchain. While layer-2 networks have helped lower these costs, they still pose a barrier for larger consumer applications.
Kulechov explained that although Lens started on Polygon, that network doesn’t support large-scale use where transactions are cheap. So, they chose a tech stack that takes advantage of Ethereum. Transactions on the Lens Network are packed with zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs and processed on Ethereum.
Now, the Lens network uses zkSync as its core technology along with validiums. Unlike Base or Arbitrum, validiums use off-chain transactions, making them much cheaper.
This allows Avara to create transactions that are more affordable than existing rollups. Kulechov believes that interactions with the Lens network should cost about the same as cloud server expenses. Developers should be able to cover these costs for their users. He stated, “Our aim is for blockchains to be free for users, just like the internet.”
Lens is defining several “social primitives” as key features of the protocol. These include accounts, usernames, graphs, feeds, and groups. Each user account can create multiple usernames across different apps and follow other users to build various graphs. Users can also join groups.
One interesting feature is that developers can set rules to control access to feeds and specific posts. For example, an event organizer could give an NFT to every attendee, restricting access to an online community only to NFT holders.
Content could also be limited to users who pay a certain amount. This means developers could create subscriber-only feeds or posts, similar to a “web3 Substack.”
Regarding content moderation, Kulechov believes that protocols should stay neutral. Each application should manage moderation based on its own needs.
Lens plans to launch the mainnet of Lens v3 in the first quarter of 2025. It will be interesting to see how this protocol upgrade impacts decentralized social networks, which currently remain niche.
Alongside Lightspeed Faction, other investors in this round include Alchemy, Avail, Circle, Consensys, DFG, Fabric Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Stellarcore, Superscript, Re7, and Wintermute Ventures. Angel investors like Anurag Arjun, Anton Bukov, Rune Christensen, Alex Gluchowski, Aleksander Leonard Larsen, Loi Luu, Spencer Noon, and Duncan Robinson also participated.