What is Farcaster and what is it used for?

Farcaster is a social network protocol, a shared set of rules for posting and following, rather than a single company's website. Your account is registered on a blockchain and your posts sit on an open network, so any app built on Farcaster can display them. It is one of the better known attempts at the "own your account" idea behind Web3.

How does Farcaster work?

Any Ethereum address can create a Farcaster account with an onchain transaction, which assigns it a Farcaster ID number. The account contracts run on OP Mainnet. There is one registry for accounts, one for renting storage and one for keys that let apps post on your behalf.

Posts, called casts, are not stored on the blockchain itself. They are signed messages kept on a peer-to-peer network of nodes, and the docs say a new message spreads across it in a few seconds. Storage is rented yearly. At the time the docs were written, one unit cost $7 and allowed up to 5,000 casts, with the oldest pruned once a limit is passed.

Usernames come in two kinds. Free names issued by Farcaster can be revoked by Farcaster, while ENS names ending in .eth are paid and controlled by your own wallet.

What is the Farcaster app?

The Farcaster app is the main client people use to read and post. It came from Merkle Manufactory, the company founded in 2020 by former Coinbase executives Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, and Romero also co-developed the earlier Warpcast client. Other clients can read the same data, because the protocol is open.

Accounts created in the official app use a recovery setup that lets Farcaster restore access by email. Users can switch to their own recovery address, after which Farcaster can no longer recover the account for them.

What are Farcaster mini apps and frames?

Mini apps are small web apps, built with ordinary HTML, CSS and JavaScript, that open inside a Farcaster client. Through Farcaster's developer kit they can connect to a user's Ethereum or Solana wallet and send notifications. They replaced Frames v2, which the docs say were rebranded as Mini Apps and supported only until the end of March 2025. Mini apps are why Farcaster is often described as a crypto app platform as well as a social network.

Who owns Farcaster now?

On January 21, 2026, Neynar, a startup backed by Haun Ventures, announced it was acquiring Farcaster. The Block reported the deal covered the protocol contracts, code, the Farcaster app and Clanker, a token launchpad on Base. Neynar said the network would remain open.

Days later, Romero said Merkle Manufactory planned to return the $180 million it had raised to investors, and stressed that Farcaster was not shutting down. He put monthly active users at about 250,000 in December 2025. Neynar has said it plans a more builder-focused direction, so features may change after October 2026.