Vitalik Buterin to Recommit to Decentralized Social Media in 2026

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he plans to fully recommit to decentralized social media in 2026, according to a Wednesday post on X. Buterin wrote that he has shifted his activity toward decentralized social platforms this year and that every post he has written or read in 2026 has been accessed through Firefly, a multi-client interface that supports X, Lens, Farcaster and Bluesky.

"If we want a better society, we need better mass communication tools," he said, arguing that only platforms built on shared, decentralized data layers can foster real competition and support mass communication systems aligned with users' interests rather than engagement metrics. He criticized many crypto-native social projects for relying on speculative tokens as a substitute for meaningful innovation, saying SocialFi experiments have repeatedly failed by rewarding pre-existing social capital and short-term price speculation instead of content quality and constructive discourse.

He contrasted those efforts with creator-subscription models such as Substack and urged users and builders to spend more time in decentralized social ecosystems to move beyond a single centralized "info warzone" toward a more competitive frontier. Decentralized social media, or SocialFi, refers to platforms built on open or blockchain-based networks where user identities, content and social graphs are not controlled by a single company.

Key Topics

Crypto, Vitalik Buterin, Firefly, Lens, Farcaster, Bluesky