Our May dispatch is here!Firefly Trading League Season 2 has wrapped, Season 3 is already speeding into action, DeFi United badges have been distributed, and the Bluesky integration has successfully landed. Meanwhile in the robot world, a parcel-sorting robot beat humans in a race and somehow looked completely indifferent to its own victory.We’ve also picked two industry reads worth checking out — easy enough for casual crypto gossip, useful enough to catch up on what’s moving in Web3 Social 💜Firefly Polymarket Trading League Season 2 Wrapped SuccessfullyIn early May, the second one-month edition of the Firefly Polymarket Trading League came to a successful close.Throughout the campaign, hundreds of traders competed on the leaderboard, with multiple Polymarket traders joining the action and engaging with the community. Leaderboard rewards were distributed after the campaign ended:https://x.com/fireflyappcn/status/2053807336746066187 https://x.com/thefireflyapp/status/2053807333172445227Firefly Polymarket Trading League Season 3 Is Now LiveBy late May, after loud and clear demand from the Firefly community, Firefly Polymarket Trading League Season 3 officially kicked off!The original 3,000 USDC prize pool remains unchanged, including PNL leaderboard rewards, daily trading rewards, and social sharing incentives. But this time, the campaign period has been cut in half to just two weeks.Same prize pool. Double the intensity. Prediction markets are getting social 💜Thousands of DeFi United Badges Have Been ClaimedAfter Kelp DAO’s rsETH token came under attack, concerns quickly spread across the market over potential bad debt and cascading liquidation risks in DeFi lending markets.To help protect the broader ecosystem, leading lending protocol Aave joined forces with multiple top protocols to form the DeFi United emergency rescue fund. Aave founder Stani Kulechov personally donated 5,000 ETH, Aave DAO passed a governance proposal to allocate 25,000 ETH from its treasury, and Mantle provided up to 30,000 ETH in three-year credit support.When DeFi was in trouble, DeFi United donors stepped up. Lens & Firefly issued honor badges to recognize these contributors 💜So far, around 2,000–3,000 DeFi United donors have claimed their badges through Firefly. It is not just a badge of honor — it is also becoming an important part of one’s on-chain social identity.https://x.com/LC/status/2054170692544057401 https://x.com/thefireflyapp/status/2049500137333178368 https://x.com/fireflyappcn/status/2049510253398773821Firefly Social Graph Now Supports BlueskyFirefly has integrated Bluesky into its social graph.Firefly users can now connect their Bluesky accounts, browse Bluesky posts from people they follow, and interact with them directly inside Firefly.https://x.com/thefireflyapp/status/2054135284527407499A thrilling World Cup campaign is on the wayThe World Cup is around the corner, and a brand-new prediction market campaign is quietly being prepared for the Firefly community.The prize pool will be bigger. The gameplay will be richer. Stay tuned, fire frens 💜Meme RealityHuman vs. Parcel-sorting robot A parcel-sorting robot raced against humans and overtook them while one of the human competitors was in the bathroom.The robot won, but as the crowd cheered, it simply waddled away — as if none of this had anything to do with it.https://x.com/kevinxu/status/2057659795256332314Truth Social: The Unbearable Lightness of Being OnlineThe good news is that Firefly now supports Truth Social too.So you can filter out the noise — without getting buried under a meme avalanche 💜https://x.com/realPureNomad/status/2056117734795059394Worth ReadingWhen Crypto Meets Everyday Spending: The Rise of Consumer Cryptohttps://x.com/thefireflyapp/status/2055149856470303025 https://x.com/fireflyappcn/status/2054080194097635354IOSG Founder: Has Web3 Reached Its Most Pessimistic Moment?“Over the past two years, I’ve been more pessimistic than ever — but also more unwilling than ever to give up.”https://x.com/jocyiosg/status/2057484685689967029

🚀 Our latest Hitchhiker’s Guide to Web3: April 2026 Recap just dropped! 📖Memes, fake mass exits, and pranks that turned into actual hacks 🫠 April was chaotic, but builders never stop shipping 🛠️@masknetwork brought the heat: fuelling social predictions with
@fireflyapp Polymarket Trading League, and championing digital sovereignty and human agency IRL from @ethcc_io to BUIDL Asia 🌐Dive into the full recap👇

🚨 FINAL CALL ANONS 🚨Web3 Social Day HK meetup is in 3 days (4/20 🌿💨)@masknetwork × @fireflyapp × @lens pure alpha, 🍕🍻, and exclusive loot for builders.Ape in or cope 👇
🔗 luma.com/3xcijdbx

gm anons ☕️
Mask’s flagship Web3 Social Day is touching grass in HK 🇭🇰🌿Builders, degens, social maxis — pull up.
@masknetwork
×
@fireflyapp
×
@lens
are bringing the next-gen social graph IRL. Alpha, vibes, and 🍕🍻 guaranteed.🎁 Grind pays: X Premium upgrades + exclusive swag up for grabs
📅 Apr 20, 2026 | 6–9PMLimited slots. Don’t fade this 👇
🔗https://luma.com/3xcijdbx

🚀 Our latest Hitchhiker’s Guide to Web3: Jan–Mar 2026 Recap has just dropped!

@masknetwork is thrilled to share that we step in as the new steward of @lens. Read full announcement below 👇👇Mask Network to Steward Next Chapter of Lens, Shaping Decentralized Social From Infrastructure to Consumer AdoptionFor years, decentralized social networks have promised a future where users own their identities, creators capture more value, and platforms are no longer controlled by a single corporate gatekeeper. Few have come close to delivering that vision at scale. Lens has.Launched as an ambitious experiment, Lens has now completed what many in Web3 once considered impossible: proving that user-owned, decentralized social networks can be built on open, composable, permissionless infrastructure—and actually work.With that core mission fulfilled, Lens is entering its next chapter under new stewardship. It does so alongside Mask Network, a team that has spent nearly a decade turning decentralized ideals into real consumer products. For this new chapter, Avara will continue in an advisory role.Mask’s Long Bet on Decentralized SocialFounded in 2017 by Suji Yan, driven by a belief in a truly free and open internet, the Mask team set out to build an easy-to-use bridge from Web2 to Web3-era decentralized applications. As early as the end of 2019, the Mask browser extension enabled users to access secure, decentralized social messaging, payment networks, and file storage directly on top of mainstream social media platforms.Mask has been deeply embedded in the decentralized social ecosystem from the beginning. The team has long supported Mastodon, the leading decentralized social network with approximately 1.9 million monthly active users. Mask has operated two of Mastodon’s most active instances—mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud—and in 2022 acquired Pawoo.net, one of Mastodon’s largest instances.That hands-on approach shaped Mask’s evolution. Its ecosystem expanded to include shared infrastructure and consumer applications. In 2022, Mask established its venture arm, Bonfire Union, which manages two funds totaling US$100 million and has invested in more than 120 projects across decentralized social networks, infrastructure, and creator economies.Today, Mask positions itself as the “Tencent of Web3”: not a single platform, but a network of interoperable social products governed under MaskDAO.“Mask’s mission to make decentralized social accessible, intuitive, and ready for everyday users is aligned with Lens’ next chapter,” said Suji Yan, Founder of Mask.Lens and Orb: The Formula for Widespread Consumer Adoption From Infrastructure to Consumer Adoption: Join Forces with Lens and OrbFrom protocol to ecosystem to its own purpose-built chain, Lens has laid the foundation for a new generation of SocialFi applications, as Lens founder Stani Kulechov has noted in his blog post here.Lens began as a community experiment and evolved into open social infrastructure. Over multiple generations of the protocol, it moved from early builder adoption to production-ready social rails, and ultimately to a permissionless, high-performance network that supports consumer-grade applications. In the process, Lens proved its core thesis: user-owned, decentralized social can operate at real-world scale while delivering the experiences people expect.What remained was the shift from infrastructure to mass adoption, guided by the right stewardship to take the protocol into real-world products.Mask Network is the ideal steward for what comes next. That transition is exemplified by the acquisition of Orb, a Web3-native social app built on Lens.By early 2025, Orb crossed 50,000 monthly active users, pioneering "you had to be there" experiences through viral mechanisms like stickerpacks, collectibles, and competitions, all focused on creator-first monetization. Now part of MaskDAO, Orb is among a growing suite of decentralized social products, including Next.ID, Web3.bio, and Firefly.social, the latter of which has partnered with leading ecosystem projects such as Fileverse, Snapshot, Polymarket, Mirror, Paragraph, and eth.limo, and has been publicly praised by Vitalik Buterin for its exceptional user experience.“Lens proved the infrastructure. Orb proves what’s possible on top of it,” said Suji Yan, Founder of Mask Network. “MaskDAO exists to take decentralized social out of the lab and into everyday life, building products that scale to millions while preserving user ownership.”"Lens enables us to rethink what social can be," said Kimmo Sirén, Founder of Orb. "With MaskDAO, we're putting culture and ownership onchain."Why Mask Is the Right Steward for Lens’ Next ChapterLens has fulfilled its original mandate: demonstrating that decentralized, user-owned social networks can be built and scaled. The infrastructure is now open, high-performance, and ready.
What the ecosystem needs next isn’t more protocols—it’s great consumer products.
Mask shares Lens’ core belief in user-owned social while bringing years of experience operating consumer platforms at scale. From Mastodon to Firefly to Orb, the team has repeatedly shown an ability to translate open infrastructure into polished, mainstream-ready applications.“Lens was built to give people ownership over their digital lives, and we’ve proven that this model can work at scale. The infrastructure is now open, resilient, and ready to support real consumer products. What comes next is mainstream adoption, and that’s where Mask’s product leadership is essential to bringing decentralized social into everyday use,” said Stani Kulechov, founder of Lens and Avara.Stani and Avara will continue to serve as advisors to Suji Yan and the Mask team. Both sides believe that in the coming years, social and DeFi will increasingly converge into the economic layer of the internet.Lens laid the foundation. Mask is building the neighborhood, bringing decentralized social out of the lab and into everyday life.

Kicking off the build season!Getting started has never been easier. 🎭

Building Decentralized Social.Here for the long game, not just the good times. 🎭