Farcaster is returning $180 million it raised over the past five years. Photo: Decrypt
The Decentralized Social Media protocol Farcaster has just announced plans to repay the entire $180 million in venture Capital raised over the past nearly five years, while confirming that the protocol will continue to operate under its new ownership, Neynar.
Given some rumors, wanted to post a few clarifications:
— Dan Romero (@dwr) January 22, 2026
Farcaster is not shutting down. The protocol works and will continue to work. There were 250,000 MAU in December and over 100,000 funded wallets. The acquirer, Neynar, is a venture-backed startup and plans to shift…
As Coin68 reported , Neynar acquired the once-highly sought-after Web3 social network from Merkle Manufactory, the project's original founder. Under the agreement, the new owner will take over everything related to Farcaster, from protocol contracts and source code to the frontend application and even the Clanker Token -generating bot.
Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero has also confirmed his resignation and move to a new project. The announcement of the sale to Neynar initially faced significant criticism from the community. Some suspected that Merkle Manufactory may have secretly refunded investors before the deal was completed.
Meanwhile, the majority of public opinion focused on criticizing the founding team for Capital hundreds of millions of dollars without building a product that could compete in the real world. Many comments frankly criticized the Web3 social network model as unrealistic and unlikely to replace centralized platforms that already dominate the market, such as X, Facebook, or Instagram.
A day after the backlash, Dan Romero announced that Merkle would repay the full $180 million to the Venture Capital, somewhat allaying concerns about the motives behind the deal. In his article on X, Romero also emphasized the company's careful Capital management efforts over the past five years.
Contrary to initial speculation about a possible "closure," Romero affirmed that Farcaster would not cease operations and would continue to function normally. The protocol recorded approximately 250,000 monthly active users in December 2025 and had over 100,000 Capital wallets.
Neynar plans to reshape its strategy to focus on developers and infrastructure, rather than directly competing with traditional social networks at the end-user level. A new roadmap aimed at engaging the builder community is being prepared for release.
Independent analyses indicate that Farcaster has struggled to expand its user base with its social-centric model. Despite early interest from the Web3 community and significant Capital , the platform has not achieved the sustainable growth expected. Currently, the project is shifting its focus to developing on-chain wallets and utilities (via the Warpcast platform).
Also on that day, Lens Protocol – a once highly anticipated SocialFi project – announced its transfer from Avara, the parent company of AAVE, to Mask Network.
Against this backdrop, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin stated that 2026 will be the year he focuses more on Decentralized Social Media like Lens. According to Buterin, this field needs to be reshaped around communication tools that serve the long-term interests of users, rather than chasing short-term engagement metrics that currently dominate centralized social media platforms.
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