It is quite obvious that mathematics involves social activities, being a science carried out collectively by mathematicians who, under normal circumstances, interact with each other. But contrary to what one would expect, this rather trivial fact is rarely considered as important for its subject matter, mostly because it has some undesired ontological consequences. An attempted solution for this tension was developed by Julian Cole's institutional account of mathematics, named Practice-Dependent Realism. In this talk, Cole's account will be evaluated and its lights and shadows assessed concerning the ontological problem that he seeks to solve. I'll argue that his institutional account, although failing in delivering a sufficient ontological account of mathematics, still opens an important linguistic route for explaining its practice.