Quick take:
- Dan Romero, a former vice president at Coinbase, assured followers that Farcaster isn’t shutting down, and that Neynar plans to shift it in a more developer-focused direction.
- According to Romero, Farcaster had 250,000 MAUs in December and boasts over 100,000 funded wallets.
- On January 20, Aave transferred Lens Protocol stewardship to Mask Network, highlighting the ongoing consolidation in the crypto social segment of the blockchain industry.
Merkle Manufactory, the organization behind the Ethereum-based Web3 social media infrastructure platform Farcaster, has announced plans to return $180 million to venture capital backers.
The report came out late on Thursday after users raised concerns on social media platforms following Neynar’s acquisition of Farcaster. Dan Romero, a former vice president at Coinbase, assured followers that Farcaster isn’t shutting down, and that Neynar plans to shift it in a more developer-focused direction.
Founded in 2020 by former Coinbase executives Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, Farcaster grew to amass an MAU of 250,000 in December and over 100,000 funded wallets, according to Romero.
The platform’s latest move demonstrates the increasing consolidation in the crypto space, with Aave transferring Lens Protocol’s (another crypto social protocol) stewardship to Mask Network, according to an announcement on January 20.
According to Akshat Vaidya, co-founder and managing partner of Arthur Hayes’ family office Maelstrom, scaling DeFi social is brutal. “Tokens and on-chain ownership are nice features, but they don’t solve the chicken-egg problem: nobody posts daily where their audience isn’t already living,” Bloomberg reported.
Last May, Farcaster raised $150 million in a round led by Paradigm with participation from a16z crypto, Haun, USV, Variant, Standard Crypto, and others, valuing the crypto startup at $1 billion.
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