Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, said he will return fully to decentralized social media in 2026. He stated that better mass communication tools are needed because current platforms favor short-term engagement over users’ long-term interests.
Buterin said he already uses a multi-client called Firefly for posting and reading. (Ed. note: Firefly supports cross-posting and reading on X, Lens, Farcaster, and Bluesky.)
He criticized many crypto-based social projects for treating speculative tokens as technical progress. He said these projects often rewarded existing social capital instead of improving content quality.
He added that associated tokens tended to collapse in value after one or two years. He rejected claims that new markets automatically improve information and cited the phrase ‘elicits information’ to highlight flawed reasoning.
Buterin called for decentralized platforms built on shared data layers to enable competition among clients. He said teams should focus on solving social problems and improving online interaction.
In November, he donated 256 ETH (about $750,000) to support privacy-focused messaging projects. He split the donation as 128 ETH (about $375,000) each to Session and SimpleX, and urged developers to improve permissionless account creation and metadata privacy.
