Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has announced his intention to fully return to decentralized social media platforms by 2026. Buterin believes that a better society requires better mass communication tools that prioritize users' long-term interests and facilitate the filtering of high-quality information and diverse perspectives. He argues that current centralized platforms often prioritize short-term engagement and fail to surface the best information or encourage constructive dialogue.
Buterin outlined the structural problems inherent in today's dominant social media platforms. He contends that these platforms often prioritize profit over empowering users, leading to a decline in the quality of online interaction. To combat these issues, Buterin advocates for increased competition within the social media landscape, which he believes can be achieved through decentralization. He argues that a shared data layer, enabled by decentralization, would allow anyone to build their own client on top, fostering innovation and preventing users from being locked into a single platform.
Buterin has criticized crypto-based social media projects that focus on adding speculative tokens as a form of innovation. He argues that these projects often reward pre-existing social capital instead of content quality, ultimately failing as tokens trend toward zero. Buterin clarified that the issue isn't combining money and social interaction but rather when platforms create price bubbles around creators instead of rewarding the content itself. He cited Substack as an example of a system that successfully supports high-quality content. He suggests that decentralized social platforms should be built and run by teams primarily focused on addressing social problems and improving online interaction.
Buterin is already using Firefly, a multi-client platform that supports posting and reading across X, Lens, Farcaster, and Bluesky. He also expressed optimism about the Lens project and encouraged users to participate more actively in decentralized social ecosystems like Lens and Farcaster to explore new forms of online interaction. Buterin believes that it is important to move beyond "a single global info warzone" and create an environment where new and healthier forms of online interaction can emerge.
Buterin acknowledged the Aave team's stewardship of Lens and expressed anticipation for the direction of the new team taking over. He believes the incoming team is genuinely interested in the "social" aspect and is focused on solving real social issues. In the coming year, Buterin plans to be more active on decentralized social platforms.
