Aave Companies acquires Mobile Metaverse Sonar
Following the acquisition, the Sonar team will look to integrate the Lens Protocol, a decentralized social graph, into its social mobile metaverse.
Aave Companies, the Web3 software company known for developing the Aave Protocol and Lens Protocol, has announced the acquisition of Sonar, a metaverse-focused startup based in San Francisco that is described as making “the first social mobile metaverse.”
As a result, the Sonar team will be integrating the Lens Protocol, a decentralized social graph, and during the next 14 or so days, all Sonar users and Moji NFT holders can head to claim.lens.xyz to mint their Lens account profile.
The co-founders of Sonar, Ben South Lee and Randolph Lee, together with Head of Growth Armand Saramout and engineer Paul Xu, will now become a part of Aave’s team, working together to not only create social mobile apps that are powered by Lens but also “other web3 consumer applications” that are planned to release sometime next year. Ben South Lee will become the Senior Vice President of Product and Desing for Aave Companies, while his brother Randolph will take on the role of Principal Engineer.
The Founder and CEO of Aave Companies, Stani Kulechov, said the following:
“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.”
Available on iOS devices via the Apple App Store, Sonar is a Web3 social gaming app, released thanks to “Y-Combinator’s Summer 2020 cohort”. Users can create their own spaces, listen to music, play various games and more using Moji NFTs, which are playable 3D emojis that are available on OpenSea via the Ethereum network.
The co-founder of Sonar, Ben South Lee, added:
“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. We want to help figure out the right combinations that are approachable and familiar to anyone—starting with Sonar!”
The full press release is available here.