Quick take:
- Existing Sonar users and Moji holders can now mint their Lens account profiles.
- Sonar is an iOS gaming app that allows users to interact via custom ‘Moji’ NFTs.
- Sonar’s co-founders and core team will join Aave’s development team.
Aave Companies, the software technology company that builds web3 protocols, applications and tools, announced today its first acquisition—Sonar. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Launched out of Y-Combinator’s Summer 2020 cohort, Sonar is a San Francisco-based startup behind its namesake mobile metaverse NFT gaming app where players can build worlds, play games, listen to music and interact with user-created spaces via custom ‘Moji’ NFTs.
Following the acquisition, Sonar plans to integrate Aave’s Lens Protocol, a Web 3 social graph that any application can plug into and build on. The protocol includes familiar social media functions like having a profile, commenting, and resharing a post. But unlike existing social media, the NFT-powered Lens Protocol allows users to fully control all of their content and data. Lens Protocol also allows developers to accelerate the development of social experiences for community-driven platforms like blockchain games and metaverse events.
According to data by “@sixdegree” on Dune Analysis, Lens saw its highest monthly transaction vs user count in November, with a total of 2.28 million transactions and 62,173 users on Nov 1.
Currently, the protocol has a total of 6,393,111 transactions and 134,235 users.
For the next 14 days, existing Sonar users and Moji holders can mint their Lens account profiles at claim.lens.xyz.
Sonar’s co-founders, brothers Ben South Lee and Randolph Lee will join the Aave Companies as the senior vice president of product and design while Randolph will be a principal engineer.
“We love Aave’s approach to social media through the Lens Protocol. It just became clear to us that all the building blocks to truly transform the way we connect online are right there on Lens,” said Ben South Lee. “We want to help figure out the right combinations that are approachable and familiar to anyone—starting with Sonar!”
The head of growth for the app, Armand Saramout, and engineer Paul Xu, will also join Aave’s development team and focus on building mobile consumer-facing social applications powered by Lens as well as other web3 consumer applications launching in 2023. The team held leadership roles at companies such as Instagram, Postmates and Medium.
“Ben, Randolph and the Sonar team bring exceptional creativity and decades of valuable mobile, engineering, product design and market growth experience in social as well as their innovative product. We are thrilled the Sonar team is joining our Lens team to accelerate our social media and mobile app strategy,” said Stani Kulechov, Founder and CEO of Aave Companies.
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