Interview with Suji: Taking Over the Hot Potato Lens, Whose Ideal Is Mask Paying For?

Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Golem (@web3_golem)

On January 20, the team behind the decentralized social protocol Lens announced the transfer of project management authority to the Mask Network team, with the original team stepping back into an advisory technical role. This news garnered significant attention within the crypto community. Many were not particularly surprised by Stani Kulechov's decision to "hand off" Lens, as in the context of the decentralized social space losing both capital and user interest, a timely exit seems like a wise move.

Lens was the center of attention in the SocialFi space during 2023-2024—benefiting from the halo of its founder from Aave, solid technology, and the compelling narrative of user-controlled social graphs... Even after Lens removed registration restrictions in February 2024, its user base continued to grow. However, by 2025, all of this turned to dust, especially after the launch of Lens Chain in May, when the team failed to follow up with a token launch.

This, in turn, puzzles me: why is the Mask team willing to take on this "mess"?

In the official statements from both sides, Lens stated that the reason for handing the project over to the Mask team is that Lens has completed the construction of decentralized social infrastructure. Now, Lens should transition from infrastructure to large-scale applications, and the Mask team is the right partner to help Lens achieve this goal.

But I don't think it's too harsh to compare Lens to a mess. According to web3.bio, the total number of Lens accounts created is 808,000, with 680,000 unique users. Even without comparing it to Web2 social platforms and just looking at its competitor Farcaster, the performance is somewhat lackluster. Farcaster has a total of 1.867 million accounts created and 1.858 million unique users, both more than double Lens's figures. There's also a gap in new user growth; Farcaster added 373,000 new registered users in January 2026, while Lens added only 1,492.

Various user metrics for Lens

Therefore, in the context where the decentralized social track is widely considered disproven and Lens is left with just a technical shell, what is Mask's perspective? What magic do they plan to work after taking over Lens? With these questions in mind, Odaily spoke with Suji Yan, founder of Mask Network.

Token Launches Have Harmed Decentralized Social

Mask Network was founded in 2017 with the vision of building a bridge connecting Web2 and Web3 users. At the product level, Mask is a browser extension that allows users to seamlessly access various Web3 services on mainstream Web2 social platforms (like X, Facebook, etc.). After 2022, Mask became more deeply involved in the decentralized social ecosystem through investments and acquisitions. Currently, Orb and Firefly remain key projects that Mask actively operates.

When discussing the reasons for taking over Lens, Suji Yan stated that Mask has actually been a shareholder in Lens for a long time, and Suji even played a role in encouraging Stani to create Lens, so there is a deep trust relationship between the two parties. Beyond this reason, Suji believes another more important factor is the alignment in philosophy between Stani and himself.

"We are not people who lack money; we are more focused on doing decentralized social right," Suji said, indicating this is a shared belief between him and Stani. Therefore, Suji believes that one of the core reasons for the failure of past generations of decentralized social products was the attempt to issue tokens to every user. Friend.tech failed precisely by making this mistake, which Suji even calls a disgrace to decentralized social, eroding market confidence in truly decentralized social platforms.

Friend.tech was a decentralized social product born in 2023. Its core model involved tokenizing individual social influence, allowing fans or other users to purchase "shares" of a KOL and gain access to private chats. The share price would increase as more people bought in, creating profit opportunities for holders. The simple model and rapid fluctuations in token value within wallets generated immense FOMO in a short time. Friend.tech's daily fee revenue once surpassed that of TRON.

What goes up must come down. Once players understood this was merely a "hot potato" game under the guise of decentralized social, where KOLs could almost costlessly harvest retail investors, Friend.tech quickly collapsed. Yet, to this day, whenever SocialFi is discussed, it remains the craziest case that took the "Fi" to its extreme.

Since mid-2024, Friend.tech's fee revenue has dropped to 0

Although Farcaster currently outperforms Lens in various metrics, Suji believes Lens still holds advantages. "The best thing about Lens is its neutrality and its distance from any exchange ecosystem," which is also one reason Suji was willing to take over Lens.

In Suji's view, Farcaster lacks neutrality entirely. "It is close to Coinbase, deliberately catering to the ideas of Coinbase's founder and Base protocol founder Jesse." Besides airdrop expectations, a significant part of Farcaster's user growth comes from Creator Coins, from Degen to the later AI token launch trend, which are all similar. However, Suji told Odaily these are "toxic growth strategies." (Odaily note: This interview took place before Neynar announced its acquisition of Farcaster. Suji is a shareholder in Neynar.)

In this regard, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin also believes that decentralized social should not overemphasize "token issuance" as innovation, attempting to incentivize creators by creating price bubbles around individuals. Practice has shown that such models often reward existing social capital rather than content quality, and token lifecycles are short.

However, Suji also stated that after taking over Lens, a new entity will be spun off. While farming behavior won't be encouraged, token issuance won't be deliberately rejected either; they will wait for the right timing.

Lack of Neutrality Means Death

"Lack of neutrality means death" is Suji's prophecy for decentralized social products. A product that isn't neutral cannot be a qualified social platform. Suji used Truth Social as an example. Truth Social is a social platform owned by Donald Trump, existing specifically to amplify Trump's "voice." It represents the ceiling for non-neutral social platforms in the world; no other individual has created a social platform with traffic surpassing Truth Social based on personal influence.

But Suji pointed out that Truth Social's underlying code uses the open-source project Mastodon (with most code donated by Mask). If the world's largest non-neutral social product is such a "makeshift operation," what uniqueness do other similar social products have?

Therefore, Suji believes that today's rapidly growing Binance Square is just a "smaller version" of Truth Social, and Farcaster is merely a North American version of Truth Social. Lens, with its neutrality, is destined to have a higher ceiling than them.

To better leverage Lens's advantages, Suji also revealed to Odaily that after taking over Lens, it will be deeply integrated with Mask's products like web3.bio, Orb, and Firefly to form complementary synergies. Firefly has already deeply integrated X functionalities (posting, liking, etc.), and Lens's social graph can help enhance user stickiness. Meanwhile, Lens will also integrate with prediction markets in the future, enabling personalized recommendations based on friends' activities (e.g., NBA game betting feeds) to improve prediction efficiency.

Web3 Social Must Be Built on Top of Web2 Social

In the earliest days of Web3 social, to craft an appealing narrative, it was common to criticize and accuse Web2 social platforms of exploiting users in terms of data ownership, privacy, and freedom of speech, highlighting Web3's advantages in these areas. Over time, this created a "mutually exclusive" competitive relationship between Web2 and Web3 social.

"We should respect Web2 as the source of data because most people weren't born after decentralization became widespread," Suji believes that since most of us were born in the internet era, building Web3 social must be based on the foundation of Web2 social—meaning it must support Web2 databases.

Suji stated they are correcting this obvious mistake. Firefly is currently one of the best products on the market for deeply integrating X functionalities, including synchronized posting, liking, bookmarking, and history. To achieve this leap from Web2 social data to Web3, Firefly also spends a significant amount annually purchasing X's API.

Vitalik Buterin posted on January 21st stating that since the beginning of this year, all his content has been synchronized across platforms like X, Lens, Farcaster, and Bluesky via Firefly. Users don't have to abandon their original Web2 social platforms while simultaneously enjoying the advantages of Web3 social features. This is perhaps Firefly's biggest selling point and, in essence, perfectly fulfills Mask's vision of bridging Web2 and Web3 users.

Firefly's UI is similar to X

There is a contradiction in social applications: people don't want to be constrained by KYC, yet they desire a high-quality, free-speech, semi-anonymous environment. To solve this contradiction, Suji revealed to Odaily that in the future, they will integrate various Web2 social graphs to determine that a user is not a bot and can be responsible for their statements. Suji believes this is also a key breakthrough point for Web3 social in the future.

A Founder Living in His Own World?

But people with a geek mindset are always in the minority in this world; not all users are Vitalik.

Firefly, and indeed all Web3 social applications, must answer a practical question: Your philosophy is sound, but why should I use you?

Lens currently does possess the infrastructure capability to support decentralized social operations. But as a user, without airdrops or token incentives, there's no motivation to create a unified account just to "move freely" across various decentralized applications. Similarly, if one can post directly on platform X, why voluntarily add an extra "layer" and do it through Firefly?

Many believe the reason Web3 social has been disproven is that decentralization and data sovereignty are not the core competitiveness of social platforms. Differences on the product and operational side—such as content quality, creator incentives, and emotional connection—are the keys for a social product to stand out today. Lens, immersed in technology for five years, has now realized this issue. "The ecosystem doesn't need more protocols; it needs excellent user experience," which is why they handed project management authority to Mask.

But what if Mask is also living in its own small world?

Suji making an appearance at an industry event

When Odaily asked this question, Suji used Manus as an example. "Simply put, Manus supports AI like ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek to help users get things done. If users used AI themselves, they could complete these tasks too. Manus is essentially just an added layer, but it ultimately succeeded." Suji attributes this to the "taste" of the product. Therefore, he believes that in the future, more users will actively use Firefly. For now, what's needed is to steadily advance the project and wait for the flowers to bloom.

"After success, the market forgets the painful waiting period that came before." Throughout the interview, Suji maintained a posture of strong conviction. He firmly believes his venture will succeed in the future, that the vision of seamlessly linking Web2 and Web3 users will ultimately be realized.

Ten years of enduring hardship cannot cool passionate blood. A more realistic question is: will this hot potato, Lens, drag Mask down?

Facing uncertainty, tightening belts has become Mask's survival strategy for this stage. "Most projects don't actually need to hold big meetings; conserving cash flow is key," Suji said. While he wouldn't refuse capitalization, he would absolutely not rush to monetize. "The easy but wrong path will definitely not lead far."