Vitalik Buterin: Full Return to Decentralized Social in 2026, Competition and Decentralization are the Starting Points for Improving Public Discourse

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.