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

BlockBeats News, January 21, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that he plans to fully return to decentralized social networking by 2026 and called for the industry to rethink the meaning of "social" itself. He pointed out that if we want a better society, we must have better mass communication tools, rather than centralized platforms that focus on short-term engagement and speculation.

Vitalik believes that truly valuable social tools should help users discover high-quality information, rational viewpoints, and consensus, rather than maximizing short-term engagement. He emphasized that achieving this goal is not a "simple trick," but an important starting point is more competition, and decentralization is the key path to achieving competition—through a shared data layer that allows anyone to build their own client.

He revealed that since the beginning of this year, he has actively returned to decentralized social networking, with all posting and reading activities carried out through multi-client tool Firefly.social, covering protocols such as X, Lens, Farcaster, and Bluesky.

Vitalik also criticized the direction deviation of some cryptocurrency social projects, pointing out that "forcing a speculative token onto a social product" is not equal to innovation. Past attempts to create a price bubble around creators often reward existing social capital rather than content quality, and the token ultimately goes to zero. He believes that decentralized social networking should be driven by teams that truly value the "social issue itself," rather than having a financialized narrative at its core.

When discussing Lens, Vitalik praised the governance work of the Aave team and expressed expectations for the new team taking over, believing that they are more focused on the essence of social interaction and have early explored directions like crypto tweets.

Finally, Vitalik stated that in the coming year, he will speak out more on decentralized social networking platforms and encourage users to participate more in the ecosystems of Lens, Farcaster, and others, breaking free from the "single global information battlefield" and exploring a more open, diverse form of new interaction.