Aave has officially handed over stewardship of the Lens Protocol to Mask Network, marking a strategic shift that allows Aave to double down on decentralized finance (DeFi) while ensuring Lens continues to grow as an open, permissionless social infrastructure. The transition places Mask Network in charge of consumer-facing product execution, while Aave steps back into a technical advisory role.
The move was confirmed by Aave and Lens founder Stani Kulechov, who emphasized that this is not an acquisition or exit, but a realignment of responsibilities. Lens remains open-source, and its core infrastructure—including the onchain social graph, profiles, follows, and smart contracts—will continue to operate without changes to ownership, governance, or intellectual property.
Mask Network Takes the Lead on Consumer-Facing Lens Products
Under the new stewardship model, Mask Network will oversee the product roadmap, user experience, and day-to-day execution of applications built on Lens. This includes driving adoption and development of consumer-facing apps such as Orb, as well as shaping how Lens-based social products reach and engage users.
Mask Network is well known for integrating Web3 features into existing social and messaging platforms, making it a natural fit to guide Lens through its next growth phase. By focusing on the application layer, Mask aims to make decentralized social experiences more accessible and compelling for mainstream users, while preserving the protocol’s open and permissionless nature.
Aave, meanwhile, will continue to support Lens at the infrastructure level. Its role is now centered on technical advisory input rather than leading product development, reinforcing Lens’ original vision as a shared social layer rather than a single destination platform.
Lens’ Infrastructure Vision Gains Support From the Ethereum Community
Lens Protocol was launched by Aave in 2022 as a Web3-native social protocol designed to give users ownership of their identities and content through onchain profiles and NFTs. From the beginning, it was positioned as infrastructure—not a standalone social app—allowing multiple applications to tap into a shared social graph and user base.
That philosophy has gained renewed attention following the stewardship transition. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin publicly praised Aave’s work on Lens and expressed optimism about its future under the new structure. He highlighted the importance of decentralized social platforms, noting that shared data layers enable healthy competition between clients and improve online discourse.
Buterin also revealed that he has returned to decentralized social platforms in 2026, using Firefly—a multi-client that supports Lens, Farcaster, X, and Bluesky—for all of his social activity this year. His comments underscore growing confidence in decentralized social infrastructure and reinforce Lens’ role as a key building block in that ecosystem.
