Vitalik Buterin Commits to ‘Full Return’ to Decentralized Social, Slams ‘Corposlop’ Platforms
Ethereum’s co-founder frames his 2026 migration to Lens and Farcaster as a necessary rejection of engagement-farming algorithms.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced Wednesday he intends to migrate entirely to decentralized social media (DeSoc) in 2026, citing “deep structural problems” in centralized incumbents that prioritize short-term engagement over user well-being.
The Move to Sovereign Social
Writing on X (formerly Twitter), Buterin declared, “In 2026, I plan to be fully back to decentralized social.” He explicitly framed the decision not as a personal preference but as a rejection of algorithms optimized for what he termed “corposlop,” platforms engineered to maximize outrage and dopamine at the expense of quality.
Buterin revealed he has already shifted his daily consumption and posting habits to Firefly, a localized aggregator developed by Mask Network that bridges feeds from X, Lens, and Farcaster. “Every post I have made or read this year has been through Firefly,” he noted, highlighting the app’s ability to let users cross-post while retaining ownership of their social graph.
“If we want a better society, we need better mass communication tools… that serve users’ long-term interests instead of optimizing for short-term engagement.”
Critique of ‘Financialized’ Influence
Buterin’s roadmap comes with a sharp critique of the crypto-social sector itself. He warned against the industry’s tendency to mistake financialization for innovation, noting that repeated attempts to attach speculative tokens to social influence have “failed in predictable ways.”
According to Buterin, SocialFi models that monetize influence directly often collapse as their tokens trend toward zero, rewarding pre-existing social capital rather than fostering new, high-quality discourse. His comments suggest a pivot in the DeSoc thesis: away from speculative “points” and toward infrastructure that solves the “global information war zone” problem.
The Institutional Shift
The timing aligns with a maturation in the underlying protocols. With Aave’s Lens Protocol moving under new stewardship and Farcaster solidifying its “frames” architecture, the ecosystem is moving beyond beta testing. Buterin’s public commitment serves as a signal to developers that the next winning social apps will likely be those that treat the social graph as a public utility rather than a casino.
