After Neynar bought Farcaster, a decentralised social network, it is still running, and it has confirmed plans to repay $180 million to investors.
Dan Romero, one of the co-founders of Farcaster, tried to put an end to rumours regarding the project’s future by declaring that the protocol was not going to be shut down now that it had been purchased by Neynar, an infrastructure provider.
Farcaster is a decentralised social networking protocol that lets developers create social programs that work with each other. Users control their identities, social graphs, and contacts on the blockchain, so they don’t have to use just one platform.
Romero informed the community that Farcaster remains operational and continues to receive significant usage. For example, in December it had 250,000 active monthly users and more than 100,000 funded wallets.
He claimed that Neynar, a business that has been building infrastructure on Farcaster for a long time and has venture capital backing, wants to take the project in a more developer-focused path.
Source: Dan Romero
Funding history and capital return plan
In July 2022, Merkle Manufactory, the business that made Farcaster, got $30 million from the venture capital firm a16z crypto. In March 2024, Paradigm led another round of investment that reportedly raised the company’s value to over $1 billion.
Romero added that Merkle has raised a total of $180 million in capital throughout the years. He wrote that the corporation would give the money back to investors. He wrote, “We plan to give back the full $180 million raised for Merkle to investors.”
He said that the decision came after five years of work and an effort to be careful with investors’ money.
Balaji Srinivasan, a Farcaster investor, responded to the tweet by confirming the repayment of investor funds. He also praised the team’s work on decentralised social infrastructure.
Leadership transition and Neynar’s role
The post was made after Neynar announced its acquisition of Farcaster. Romero had claimed before that Neynar will be in charge of keeping Farcaster’s protocol contracts, code repositories, and consumer app up to date, which would mean a change in leadership.
Romero and several of his team members will stop working on operations and start new initiatives as part of the transfer.
Neynar has been an important part of Farcaster’s ecosystem since the beginning. It was one of the original Farcaster clients, and it built the infrastructure that supports a lot of developers who are working on the protocol.
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