Odaily News: Suji Yan, founder of Mask, commented on X regarding Neynar's acquisition of Farcaster, stating: "More robust competition is beneficial. I did hear some scattered rumors earlier, but I never verified them with the Neynar team. We should strengthen our cooperation. I sincerely congratulate the Neynar team. For disclosure, I am a minor shareholder in Neynar, and we are using Neynar's software and technology. They are a group of exceptional people."
Yesterday, Aave founder Stani announced that the administrative authority of the social protocol Lens will be transferred to the Mask team, with the original team serving as technical advisors.
Odaily News: Dan Romero, co-founder of the decentralized social protocol Farcaster, announced via a post that Neynar is acquiring Farcaster. Over the coming weeks, ownership of Farcaster's protocol contracts and code repositories, the Farcaster application, and Clanker will be progressively transferred to Neynar, which will be responsible for the ongoing operation and maintenance of the related products and infrastructure.
Dan Romero stated that some members of the Merkle team, Varun, and himself will step back from the day-to-day operations of Farcaster to focus on new projects. He pointed out that the Neynar team has been deeply involved in ecosystem development since Farcaster's inception, being one of its earliest clients, and its infrastructure currently supports the majority of the developer ecosystem.
Dan Romero noted that after five years of development, Farcaster requires a new path forward and leadership to unlock its potential, and he expressed anticipation for the direction Neynar will take after assuming control.
Odaily News Vitalik Buterin stated that he plans to fully return to decentralized social networks in 2026, believing that to build a better society, we must have better large-scale communication tools. These tools should help people filter high-quality information and perspectives, find consensus, and serve users' long-term interests, rather than maximizing short-term interactions and emotional polarization.
Vitalik pointed out that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution to the above problems, but increasing competition is an important starting point, and decentralization is the key path to achieving competition: through a shared data layer, allowing anyone to build different clients on top of it. He revealed that since the beginning of this year, he has started using decentralized social tools for reading and posting, with all content synchronized across platforms such as X, Lens, Farcaster, and Bluesky via Firefly.
He also criticized some crypto social projects for deviating from their original purpose, excessively viewing "token issuance" as innovation, and attempting to create price bubbles around individuals to incentivize creators. However, practice shows that such models often reward existing social capital rather than content quality, and tokens have short lifecycles. Vitalik emphasized that money and social interaction are not inherently in conflict; the key lies in whether they truly serve the content itself, such as subscription-based support models, rather than speculative asset designs.
In his view, decentralized social should be driven by teams that genuinely care about the "essence of social interaction." Vitalik acknowledged the Aave team's previous long-term maintenance of Lens and expressed anticipation for the direction of the new team taking over, believing it is more focused on solving real social problems. He stated that he will be more vocal on decentralized social platforms in the coming year and encourages more users to participate in ecosystems like Lens and Farcaster, moving away from the information confrontation environment of single platforms to explore new forms of interaction.
