Phaver
It claimed half of Lens traffic, then ran out of cash after its token launch
A Helsinki-built mobile social app that let people sign up with ordinary logins and post to the Lens and Farcaster networks, with points and a SOCIAL token.
- Capital raised (announced)
Recorded announced backing; this is separate from cash received, customer deposits and money recovered.
- Reported peak downloads
- Estimated
Team-reported cumulative peak relayed in April 2025; peak date and counting method unspecified. Downloads are not daily users.
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 2023 |
Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.
People
| Name | Role | Period | Now | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joonatan Lintala | — | Co-founder of Phaver and of Shook Digital, a short-video advertising company | Oct 2026 | |
| Tomi Fyrqvist | — | Working in "AI & Finance"; building @AidenCloudAI | Oct 2026 |
Timeline
May 2022
5 October 2023
The company described plans for product work, hiring, partnerships and marketing.
September 2024
The claim portal failed for hours, by the account former staff later gave. The token then lost 99% of its value.
January 2025
5 April 2025
How it ended
Ran out of money
Phaver's mobile app was switched off in January 2025, and its closure became public in early April 2025, when a DeFi writer relayed what former staff had told him: the company had run out of funds after paying more than $1 million to list its token on five exchanges and selling none of it at launch, and as a Finnish employer it still owed staff their notice pay. Some former team members said they would carry the token on under a new DAO.
What happened next
- Aftermath5 April 2025
Some former team members said they were working on SocialDAO to find new uses for the SOCIAL token. Its outcome was not researched.
Still alive
Open spot
Phaver is gone. Is your social app still running?
Spotlight your project here.
Sources
9 sources behind this page.
- 1Finnish startup secures $7 million seed funding for user-friendly web3 social platform expansion · ArcticStartup · Oct 2023
- 2Phaver - Seed · CoinCarp (fundraising database) · user-editable
- 3Phaver Shuts Down Amid Token Collapse and Financial Struggles · FinanceFeeds · Apr 2025
- 4Lens' leading project Phaver ceases operations. Is decentralized social networking no longer feasible? · PANews
- 553. Joonatan Lintala, Shook Digital: 7m€ crypto token pre-sale (Rahoituskierros podcast episode listing) · Suomalaiset podcastit (listing of the Rahoituskierros podcast) · Apr 2026
- 6Post by @DefiIgnas (X user id 831767219071754240) on Phaver's closure · twitterapi.io · Apr 2025
- 7X account lookup: @TomiFyrqvist · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 8X post search: @TomiFyrqvist posts about Phaver (2023–2025) · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 9X posts by @TomiFyrqvist, latest (including an 18 February 2025 post on Aiden Cloud) · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.