Neynar has acquired Farcaster from Merkle. They will now maintain the Farcaster protocol, run the Farcaster clients and operate Clanker.

Neynar, a leading infrastructure provider in the Farcaster ecosystem, is acquiring the Farcaster protocol, official clients, and Clanker from Farcaster’s parent company Merkle Manufactory. Ownership of the protocol smart contracts, code repositories, the main Farcaster app, and the Clanker AI token launchpad will be transferred to Neynar over the coming weeks, after which Neynar will maintain and operate the full stack. As part of the deal, Jack and part of the Clanker team will join Neynar, while Farcaster co-founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, along with much of the Merkle team, are stepping back from day‑to‑day work on Farcaster to pursue new projects. Farcaster is an Ethereum-based decentralized social protocol previously operated by Merkle Manufactory, which raised around $150–180 million and was valued at roughly $1 billion in 2024 before shifting focus toward a wallet product. Neynar has long been the primary developer and infrastructure backbone for Farcaster, powering a large share of third‑party apps and serving more than 1,000 customers in the ecosystem. The acquisition consolidates both the core protocol and key infrastructure under Neynar, positioning it as the central steward of Farcaster’s technical roadmap and developer-facing services. Neynar has stated that Farcaster, its clients, and Clanker are not shutting down and that it intends to push a more builder‑ and developer‑focused direction, aiming to make it easier to launch and monetize applications on the network. This move occurs against a broader reshaping of decentralized social (“SocialFi”), including Lens Protocol’s recent stewardship transfer to Mask Network, and is part of a trend where major social protocols are moving under new operators better aligned with infrastructure and developer tooling. For users, near‑term changes are expected to be minimal, with existing apps and Clanker continuing to function, while developers will increasingly interact with Neynar for protocol governance, infrastructure, and ecosystem coordination.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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