Aave transferred stewardship of the Lens Protocol to Mask Network, a move confirmed by Aave and Lens founder Stani Kulechov. The handover narrowed Aave’s role to technical advisory while freeing the protocol to redeploy capital and engineering resources toward core decentralized finance activities.
The change matters because Aave signalled a strategic pivot: it will intensify efforts on real‑world assets, institutional credit and consumer financial products, and it plans to route non‑protocol revenue to AAVE token holders, aligning new business lines with token economics.
Aave described the transfer as a deliberate reallocation. Stani Kulechov pointed to the global financial asset market—estimated at approximately $500 trillion—as the long‑run opportunity for on‑chain finance to unlock liquidity. Based on the statement, Aave will concentrate on three pillars: tokenizing real‑world assets (RWAs), building institutional credit solutions, and launching simpler consumer‑facing financial products to broaden adoption.
Operationally, Aave narrowed its operational footprint for Lens and retained a technical advisory role. The protocol plans to channel revenues from non‑protocol activities back to AAVE holders, a change that directly ties commercial upside from new initiatives to the token’s economic case.
Lens moves from infrastructure to consumer products under Mask
Mask Network will assume day‑to‑day stewardship of Lens and drive execution toward consumer‑grade SocialFi applications. The transition shifts Lens from an infrastructure experiment toward product delivery: Mask Network will lead product roadmaps, UX work and operational management of social apps built on Lens, including projects like Orb that aim for broader user appeal.
Mask framed the takeover as addressing Lens’s adoption gap—moving from a builder‑centric protocol to unified social experiences that can scale to mainstream users. That practical emphasis on usability and product market fit contrasts with Lens’s earlier phase of open infrastructure development.
Investors and market participants will now watch two measurable threads: the pace at which Aave deploys RWA and institutional credit initiatives and how quickly non‑protocol revenue begins to flow to AAVE holders. At the same time, user‑growth metrics for Lens‑based consumer products under Mask will test whether a product‑led approach can convert infrastructure into daily active users—each outcome will materially affect token economics and market positioning for both projects.
