According to a report by TechCrunch, Avara, the development company behind lending platform Aave, social protocol Lens, and crypto wallet Family, has announced the completion of a $31 million financing round led by Lightspeed Faction.
In addition to Lightspeed Faction, participants in this round of financing include Alchemy, Avail, Circle, Consensys, DFG, Fabric Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Stellarcore, Superscript, Re7, Wintermute Ventures, as well as angel investors Anurag Arjun, Anton Bukov, Rune Christensen, Alex Gluchowski, Aleksander Leonard Larsen, Loi Luu, Spencer Noon, and Duncan Robinson.
Avara is building the decentralized social protocol Lens, which serves as infrastructure for social and consumer applications. Lens was originally built on the Polygon blockchain and now uses zkSync as its underlying technology, combined with validiums.
Consumer applications using Lens v2 include NFT creation and sharing app Zora, Twitter-like platforms Hey and Kaira, and community-focused app Orb.
The financing announcement comes weeks after Lens launched its completely revamped protocol version Lens v3. The protocol is reportedly planning to launch the Lens v3 mainnet in the first quarter of 2025.