The blockchain-based social protocol is returning to the fundamental crypto elements it initially sought to leave behind.
Farcaster is shifting its focus from social networking to on-chain wallets after five years as a blockchain-based social platform, co-founder Dan Romero said in a series of posts, noting the team has been unable to find a “sustainable growth mechanic for the Twitter-like social network.”
In a Farcaster post on Sunday, Dec. 7, Romero wrote that the team “tried social-first” for 4.5 years but “it didn’t work for us,” adding that “wallet has been growing so we’re doubling down on that direction.”
The pivot follows earlier signals that Farcaster was moving away from its original model. In late October, the project acquired Clanker, an AI agent-powered token launchpad on Layer 2 Base, and began integrating it into the app.
“Earlier this year, we launched a wallet in our app. It has scaled quickly, and we think it’s the closest we’ve been to product-market fit in five years,” Romero wrote in another Farcaster post.
The team now plans to add social features to the wallet instead of trying to maintain a standalone social network. For those who aren’t fans of the platform’s new direction, Romero suggested users try another client, build one or “consider another social network.”
Farcaster was founded in 2020 by two Coinbase alumni, Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan. The platform has raised roughly $180 million across rounds, including a $30 million seed round in 2022 and a $150 million Series A in May 2024, led by Paradigm with participation from a16z and other investors, at a valuation of about $1 billion.
