Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he plans to fully return to decentralized social platforms in 2026, arguing that the next phase of online communication must move away from engagement-driven models and speculative incentives that have dominated both Web2 and crypto-native social experiments.
What Happened
In a post on X, Buterin framed decentralized social not as a niche crypto product category but as a response to a broader societal failure in mass communication.
He said existing platforms are optimized for short-term engagement rather than users’ long-term interests, and warned that many crypto social projects have repeated the same mistakes by financializing attention instead of improving information quality.
“If we want a better society, we need better mass communication tools,” Buterin wrote, adding that decentralization enables competition by allowing multiple clients to operate on top of shared data layers, rather than locking users into a single platform’s incentives.
Buterin said he has already been using decentralized social infrastructure this year through Firefly, a multi-client interface that supports posting and reading across platforms including Lens and Farcaster.
He described this approach as a way to reduce dependence on any single “global information warzone.”
A Rejection Of Tokenized Social Incentives
A central theme of Buterin’s post was a direct critique of token-driven social models.
He said many crypto projects mistakenly treated speculative tokens as innovation, creating price bubbles around individuals rather than rewarding content quality or meaningful contribution.
According to Buterin, these experiments consistently failed by amplifying pre-existing social capital and collapsing once token prices declined.
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He contrasted this with creator monetization models like Substack, which rely on subscriptions rather than tradeable social assets.
“Creating new markets and new assets is not automatically good,” he wrote, warning that financial incentives often distort rather than improve information discovery in social systems.
Decentralization As Infrastructure, Not Financialization
Buterin argued that decentralized social should be built by teams focused first on social problems, not token design.
His comments arrive as decentralized social platforms gain renewed attention but continue to struggle with adoption, moderation, and sustainable governance.
Rather than calling for a single winning platform, Buterin encouraged broader participation across decentralized social ecosystems, positioning the space as an open frontier for experimentation in how information is shared, filtered, and governed.
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