DeFi darling Aave took its first step into the world of social applications with Lens Protocol a few months ago. Now, Aave is accelerating its social strategy with its acquisition of Sonar. AAVE plans to merge Lens and Sonar to create a heavyweight metaverse platform.
Lens Protocol
In February 2022, as Vitalik Buterin laid the groundwork for SoulBound Tokens, Aave entered the digital identity market with the release of Lens Protocol. The Lens Protocol uses NFT technology to allow users to own their data (messages, interactions, etc.).
Side note: Follow our Lens account on Lenster 🙂
However, Lens Protocol isn’t just a single social application but an open-source platform that allows users decentralized identities to be used in new applications. It is a modular environment in which developers can enrich the ecosystem from the heart of Lens Protocol.
The platform has two types of NFTs: Profile and Tracking NFTs. Profile NFTs contain content created by the user, and Tracking NFTs contain follower data. This distinction allows creators to monetize their content and manage their communities. Users connect to the application by signing in with their crypto wallet containing their Profile NFT.
The project has been deployed on Polygon for obvious reasons: a social application must have a fast network with very low transaction fees.
The Passage to the Metaverse
On December 05, Aave announced that it acquired Sonar. Sonar is a mobile application (available only on iOS) that allows you to create virtual worlds and interact with other users with 3D avatars called “Moji,” represented by NFTs.
This acquisition announcement reignited interest in the avatars for sale on OpenSea. A total of 51 NFTs were sold on the day of the announcement, a remarkable fact in a gloomy market. The NFTs owners can create their Lens profile within the next 14 days.
Thanks to this acquisition, Sonar joins an already rich ecosystem with around ten applications, more than 105,000 user profiles, and 7.8 million transactions. The Sonar team will continue to work in the ecosystem as the leadership of the team remains largely intact.
With Sonar, Aave can create the first virtual world based on an active social network. This gives them an important advantage in Web3.
Even if these virtual worlds are far from The Sandbox or Decentraland, their accessibility via a smartphone brings them closer to Aavegotchi, a community project supported by a grant from Aave. We are seeing the first forays of AAVE into the metaverse coalesce into a coherent application set.
While Aave has often been criticized for the slowness of its innovations, this application remains a model of security and stability, and there is no doubt that it will be the same for the Lens Protocol ecosystem, even if it isn’t yet completely user-friendly.
Thanks to this Lens Protocol extension, Aave has become a web3 staple. Aave application remains the leader in lending and one of the decentralized finance applications with the most TVL. The upcoming arrival of its stablecoin GHO and its cross-chain lending should further consolidate this position. With Lens Protocol, Aave also ensures its leadership in the social applications field.
This article was written by Patrice Vibert, and you can follow him on Twitter @TendancesCrypto.
