FTX Ventures Bets on Decentralized Social Media with Lens Investment

Lens Protocol, which bills itself as a decentralized social graph, has received an investment from FTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of crypto exchange FTX.

The news was first reported by Fortune and is the only public funding Lens has received, according to Crunchbase, which is calling the raise a seed round. The amount Lens raised has not been disclosed.

Lens’ basic function is to operate as a base layer for social applications — users’ data, like followers, posted content, and messages would exist at the protocol level, instead of a specific platform like Twitter or Instagram maintaining fundamental control of that information.

The protocol uses NFTs that allow for ownership over a profile, piece of content, or followers, to be established.

Lens launched in May, after plans to launch the project became public in February. The project adopted XMPT, an encrypted messaging service, earlier this week.

Stani Kulechov, the founder of DeFi lending protocol Aave, is one of the key figures behind Lens — so far, 88,101 wallets own a Lens profile, according to a Dune Analytics query.

Wallets With Lens Profiles

October marked an all-time high for the protocol in terms of active users, with just over 28% of Lens profile owners posting, commenting, or doing what’s called “mirroring,” which is similar to retweeting on Twitter.

FTX Ventures was founded in January of this year and has made 49 investments so far, according to Crunchbase. Outside of the investment in Lens, the venture arm has invested in the crypto information platform Messari, and the modular blockchain network, Celestia.