Vitalik: In 2026, will fully return to decentralized social media, calling for the creation of communication tools that truly serve long-term value

On January 21, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced he plans to fully shift back to decentralized social networking by 2026 and urged the industry to rethink what “social” truly means. He noted that building a better society requires better mass communication tools—not centralized platforms fixated on short-term engagement and speculation. Vitalik argues truly valuable social tools should help users find high-quality information, rational perspectives, and consensus, rather than maximizing short-term engagement. He stressed this goal isn’t a “simple trick”: a key starting point is more competition, and decentralization is the core path to that—via a shared data layer letting anyone build their own client. He revealed that since the start of this year, he’s actively returned to decentralized social networking, doing all posting and reading through the multi-client tool Firefly.social, which covers protocols like X, Lens, Farcaster, and Bluesky. Vitalik also criticized some crypto social projects for going off track, saying “forcing a speculative token onto a social product” doesn’t equal innovation. Past attempts to inflate creator-focused bubbles often reward existing social capital over content quality, and those tokens eventually crash to zero. He believes decentralized social should be driven by teams focused on “the social issue itself”—not those centered on a financialized narrative. When discussing Lens, Vitalik praised the Aave team’s governance work and expressed optimism about the new team taking over, noting they’re more focused on social interaction’s essence and have already explored directions like crypto tweets early on. Finally, Vitalik said he’ll speak out more on decentralized social platforms in the coming year, encouraging users to engage more with ecosystems like Lens and Farcaster. His goal: break free from the “single global information battlefield” and explore more open, diverse forms of interaction.