@eirrann.eth

So, @farcaster really is being sold: not Merkle, but stewardship of the protocol contracts and repos, the Farcaster app, and Clanker is moving to @neynar. While everyone I know on Farcaster seemed to suspect that an acquisition had been in the works for a while now, I don’t think anyone outside the deal could’ve predicted that the @neynar team would be the buyer. Genuinely surprising outcome. My initial take is cautiously optimistic (while I'm generally optimistic, I've tried to think this hot take through a bit to check my inherent bias for positivity). For a while, it’s felt like Merkle had run out of convincing answers for how to get Farcaster to become the winning horse among all those "racing to be first to PMF" (see QC in thread) in the decentralized social plus finance space (dare I use the dreaded SocialFi moniker) without losing what made it special. A handoff to a team that has lived in the ecosystem from day one, and that’s explicitly framing the vision as “Enable builders to go from idea to recurring revenue, supported by a builder-first network”, feels like a real reset. And as @rish pointed out, “builders” here can’t just mean software. If Farcaster is going to be a durable home, it has to keep being a place for “builders of all kinds - software, art, music, literature”, with crypto rails as infrastructure, not the entire identity of the network. That sounds like it might just continue to be a home for artists like me. As I’ve stated before at length (see QC), "I have a strong vested interest in the long-term success of Farcaster: as a social networking protocol that I pray will remain sufficiently decentralized to prevent me from losing my online/onchain identity ever again" because a single platform or app decides I’m gone. So yes: I’m watching the posture framed around decentralization and open-client architecture closely. But I’m also hopeful that Rish & Co at Neynar bring a renewed, builder-first focus that feels more like “home” for folks like me than any trading-first timeline ever will. A few quotes that are driving my optimism (QCs in thread): @dwr: “Farcaster needs a new approach and leadership to reach its full potential”, and over the next few weeks they’ll transfer protocol contracts, code repos, the app and Clanker to Neynar. @rish: The vision is “Enable builders to go from idea to recurring revenue, supported by a builder-first network”, and explicitly: “builders of all kinds - software, art, music, literature” (software as glue; crypto rails as default infrastructure). @fredwilson.eth from USV, which invests in both Farcaster and Neynar, framed this week’s Lens and Farcaster stewardship changes as not “decentralized social has failed”, but that “[p]rotocols don’t die so easily”. Fred also cited @vitalik.eth’s excellent point that “decentralized social should be run by people who deeply believe in the ‘social’ part, and are motivated first and foremost by solving the problems of social”. This connects to the underlying thread of what I've written before: I’m invested in Farcaster long-term because it’s the closest thing I’ve found to an identity layer that can outlast any single client or company. Sources cited in this cast and the thread that follows 👇 https://farcaster.xyz/dwr/0x72aab3a5 https://farcaster.xyz/rish/0xc8891ea6 https://farcaster.xyz/eirrann.eth/0xe5ea41e5

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