Lens raises $15 million in funding round

The Lens Protocol project, part of the lending DeFi protocol Aave, closed a funding round of $15 million led by IDEO CoLab Ventures.

Today, we’re excited to announce our $15 million funding round to accelerate the adoption of the next generation of the internet powered by human connection –- the people-powered social layer. pic.twitter.com/EIbWeWAYiW

— Lens Protocol (@LensProtocol) June 8, 2023

Among other investors: General Catalyst, Blockchain Capital and Palm Tree, as well as Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams, OpenSea CEO Alex Atallah, entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan and co-founder Polygon Sandeep Nailwal.

Lens Protocol is a composable, decentralized social graph, which uses smart contracts on the Polygon blockchain.

Users of the platform can build apps, interact and follow updates from others. Each account is a non-fungible token that provides profile governance. NFTs contain “the history of all posts, mirrors, comments and other content”.

“By offering full ownership of the [account] and social capital to people, Lens aims to change how we create value, share it and monetise on the internet,” said a project spokesperson.

The team will use the funds to expand its ecosystem.

The Aave developers announced Lens in July 2021 and viewed it as an Ethereum-based Twitter alternative. The official launch of the project took place in February 2022.

Earlier in March 2023, the Web3 social network So-Col (Social Collectables), founded by crypto influencer Irene Zhao, raised $4.5 million.