Aave has transferred stewardship of the Lens social protocol to Mask Network as it sharpens its focus on decentralised finance.
The move gives Mask Network responsibility for consumer-facing product execution while Aave steps back to a technical advisory role.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov said the company will concentrate on DeFi while continuing to support Lens at the infrastructure level.
Mask Network will lead application development, product strategy, and day-to-day operations for Lens-based social platforms.
Both teams said the transition does not constitute an acquisition or an exit from social infrastructure.
Lens will remain open-source and permissionless, with no changes to protocol ownership, governance, or treasuries.
Consumer-facing applications such as Orb will now fall under Mask Network’s execution roadmap.
Aave said its role will narrow to advising on protocol-level architecture rather than building social products.
Lens was launched by Aave in 2022 as a Web3-native social protocol built around onchain identities and content ownership.
Vitalik Buterin praised the transition, saying the Aave team “has done a great job stewarding Lens up to this point.”
Buterin added that decentralised social platforms with shared data layers are critical to improving online communication.
At the time of reporting, Aave price was $160.58.