Aave Companies makes its first acquisition with mobile NFT gaming sonar

Quick take:

• Existing Sonar users and Moji holders can now create 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, today announced its first acquisition – Sonar. The terms of the agreement were not made public.

Launched from Y-Combinator’s Summer 2020 cohort, Sonar is a San Francisco-based startup behind its namesake mobile metaverse NFT game app where players can build worlds, play games, listen to music and interact with user-created spaces via custom “Moji ” NFTs.

After the acquisition, Sonar plans to integrate Aaves Lens Protocol, a Web 3 social graph that any application can plug into and build upon. The protocol includes familiar social media functions such as having a profile, commenting and forwarding a post. But unlike existing social media, the NFT-powered Lens Protocol allows users to fully control all content and data. Lens Protocol also allows developers to accelerate the development of social experiences for community-driven platforms such as blockchain games and metaverse events.

According to data from “@sixdegree” at Dune Analysis, Lens saw its highest number of monthly transactions versus users in November, with a total of 2.28 million transactions and 62,173 users on November 1st. Currently, the protocol has a total of 6,393,111 transactions and 134,235 users.

Over the next 14 days, Existing Sonar users and Moji holders can now create their Lens account profiles at claim.lens.xyz.

Sonar’s co-founders, brothers Ben South Lee and Randolph Lee, will join Aave Companies as senior vice president of product and design, while Randolph will serve as 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 really transform the way we connect online are there at Lens,” said Ben South Lee. “We want to help find the right combinations that are accessible and familiar to everyone – starting with Sonar!”

App growth manager Armand Saramout and engineer Paul Xu will also join the company’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 products. We are thrilled to have the Sonar team join our Lens team for to accelerate our social media and mobile app strategy,” said Stani Kulechov, Founder and CEO of Aave Companies.

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