The man who helped create the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency wants to fix what he’s calling the “info warzone” of social media. Vitalik Buterin said this week that decentralized social platforms are his main focus for 2026, and he will focus on efforts to challenge Facebook, X, and other social media giants.
Buterin told followers on Wednesday on X that he has already made the switch, running everything through Firefly—a unified interface that pulls together content from X, Lens, Farcaster, and Bluesky. Every post he has written or read this year has gone through this tool, cutting ties with the traditional single-platform approach most people use.
“If we want a better society, we need better mass communication tools,” the Ethereum co-founder wrote. His argument: only platforms running on shared, decentralized data can create real competition and put users first instead of catering to engagement algorithms built to sell ads.
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The Failed Promise of SocialFi
Buterin did not hold back anything when talking about crypto-native social projects that bet everything on speculation rather than building something substantial. He called out SocialFi experiments that went bust after handing rewards to people who already had followers and chasing quick price pumps rather than encouraging good content and actual conversations.
The majority of these token-driven platforms experienced a similar fate: initial excitement at launch, a plethora of spam posts by individuals exploiting the system for tokens, and ultimately, a total collapse within a year or two. Buterin held up creator-subscription services like Substack as a better model—one that actually rewards people for making stuff worth reading.
The announcement coincides with significant changes in the decentralized social media landscape. For instance, on Wednesday, Neynar (a company that helps make decentralized social apps work smoothly) bought Farcaster, a decentralized social network protocol. Co-founder Dan Romero admitted that, “after five years, it’s clear Farcaster needs a new approach and leadership to reach its full potential.”
At the same time, Aave handed off Lens Protocol to Mask Network this week, putting the Web3 social company in charge of building apps regular people might actually use. These moves show how tough it’s been for decentralized platforms to turn early buzz into lasting growth.
Competition Through Decentralization
What Buterin’s pushing for is pretty straightforward: let people compete by opening up the infrastructure. Standard social media traps you on one platform. Decentralized networks let different apps tap into the same social data underneath. That’s what he means by a “competitive frontier”—a place where new ideas can take off without forcing people to ditch their friends and old posts.
The numbers tell a mixed story. Farcaster’s got more than two million sign-ups and sees hundreds of thousands of daily posts and reactions. Lens Protocol sits at around 506,000 users, based on data from Dune Analytics. Those figures look tiny next to Instagram or TikTok, but they’re respectable for technology that’s still finding its footing.
Buterin wants developers and regular users to spend more time in these spaces. He’s planning to use Lens more himself and engage with other decentralized protocols, putting his reputation on the line for platforms trying to reinvent how people talk online without corporate control.
