Farcaster Unveils Powerful and Promising Return of $180M to Investors After Neynar Acquisition
After Farcaster, the decentralized social networking protocol, was acquired by infrastructure provider Neynar, it will be giving back $180 million to its investors.
Co, founder Dan Romero revealed that the protocol is still functional and it’s serving about 250, 000 monthly active users and more than 100, 000 funded wallets. Meanwhile, Neynar is set to take Farcaster’s development in a more developer, centric direction.
Given some rumors, wanted to post a few clarifications:
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…
— Dan Romero (@dwr) January 22, 2026
Also Read: Is Farcaster Worth $1B or Just a Spambot Haven?
Acquisition and Operational Continuity
Earlier, stage, venture, backed Neynar, which has been building tools on Farcaster since the protocol’s inception, is to become responsible for the protocol contracts, code repositories, and the consumer application.
By handing over the daily operations to Neynar, Romero and several members of the core team will be able to focus on other projects. Neynar’s focus will be on infrastructure scaling and developer support.
Capital Return
Merkle Manufactory, the company that developed Farcaster, secured roughly $30 million from a16z crypto in July 2022, and another round led by Paradigm in March 2022, which helped push the company’s valuation over the $1 billion mark.
The total amount of capital raised over a period of five years is $180 million, which Merkle is planning to return to its investors in full.
Broader Idea
Lens Protocol, a social graph on the chain, has recently passed the control from Aave to Mask Network, enabling Aave to concentrate more on decentralized finance while still being a technical adviser for the other two.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has on numerous occasions encouraged the community to embrace open, decentralized communication tools, asserting that better mass communication infrastructure is a vital prerequisite for a healthier society.
Also Read: Ethereum Eyes $3,440 Resistance Zone While Railgun Launches Private DeFi
Filed under: Bitcoin - @ January 23, 2026 7:00 pm