Network School, the community led by investor and author Balaji Srinivasan, has acquired Farcaster from Neynar, The Block reported on October 15, 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Neynar's co-founder Rish said the company is handing over the "Farcaster app, protocol repositories and related products" after weighing several other offers. Rish and fellow co-founder Manan are leaving, while other Neynar employees will join Network School to keep developing Farcaster.
Farcaster will be renamed the "Network State Protocol". Because the sale covers an app, code repositories and related products rather than a company, the deal is classed here as an asset purchase.
What Farcaster is
Farcaster is a decentralised social network built on a public protocol, so that accounts and followers are not tied to a single company's servers. It was created by Merkle Manufactory, which raised $30 million from a16z crypto in July 2022 and later closed a round led by Paradigm in March 2024 that reportedly pushed its valuation above $1 billion, according to Cointelegraph. Merkle's lifetime funding was $180 million.
In January 2026 Merkle handed Farcaster to Neynar, a venture-backed infrastructure startup that had long built on the network. Merkle co-founder Dan Romero said at the time that the protocol would not shut down, citing 250,000 monthly active users in December and more than 100,000 funded wallets. Merkle said it planned to return the full $180 million to its investors; Srinivasan, himself a Farcaster investor, confirmed the return of funds.
“Farcaster app, protocol repositories and related products”
A rulebook for users
The new direction is more than a change of owner. According to The Block, the app will ask users to accept or decline a "social smart contract" that sets its rules. Users who accept receive an onchain access NFT. Users who decline keep read-only access in the main app, and their keys, funds, followers and post history move to another client.
The rules list conduct that can get an account banned, including hate speech, death threats, scams, repeatedly starting fights, stalking and presenting AI-generated content as one's own; The Block noted that the project calls these "digital felonies". The app plans to use AI moderation and require human verification to cut down on bots.
The stated aim of the Network State Protocol is to build opt-in digital societies that, in the project's words, "ultimately gets printed out in the physical world".
Questions still open
Neynar's January purchase also included Clanker, a token launchpad. Rish's announcement did not say what happens to it. Hosts of the GM Farcaster show said during a livestream that Rish was considering breaking Clanker apart and looking for a different buyer, The Block reported; the company has not confirmed that.
Some users said on X that they were banned over posts about Elon Musk, Flock cameras and "gay appreciation" that were at least three months old. The Block said it had not verified those reports.
The sources reviewed do not give Farcaster's current user numbers, the price paid, or how many Neynar staff are moving. They also do not say how the open protocol and the main app will be governed separately, beyond the report that the underlying protocol is expected to stay open.
Farcaster's current user numbers were not reported in The Block's article. The most recent figure in the sources is the 250,000 monthly active users that Romero cited for December 2025.
A second sale in one year
Farcaster has gone from a venture-funded startup to two successive handovers within a year. Rish said the project needs a different operating model for its next stage, and Neynar chose Network School from the offers it received.
For people with accounts, the practical test will come when the social smart contract goes live and users decide whether to accept it.
