TL;DR
- Merkle Manufactory will return $180M to venture capital investors following the sale of Farcaster to Neynar, a decentralized social infrastructure firm.
- Dan Romero confirmed that the repayment will cover the full amount of capital raised over five years and that the platform will remain operational after the acquisition.
- Neynar will steer the protocol toward a developer-focused approach; it currently maintains 250,000 monthly users and more than 100,000 active wallets.
Merkle Manufactory, the company behind the decentralized social networking protocol Farcaster, will return the $180 million raised from venture capital investors. The decision will be carried out following the sale of the protocol to Neynar, a company specialized in infrastructure for decentralized social applications and backed by Haun Ventures.
Dan Romero, co-founder of Farcaster, confirmed that the repayment will cover the full amount of capital contributed by investors over the past five years. The repayment will be executed by Merkle Manufactory, the entity that developed and operated the protocol since its founding in 2020 alongside Varun Srinivasan.
Farcaster Will Be Oriented Toward Developers
Romero clarified that Farcaster will remain operational after the acquisition. The protocol will continue to function without interruptions and will retain its current architecture. According to data shared by the team, the platform recorded close to 250,000 monthly active users in December and exceeds 100,000 funded wallets across its ecosystem.
Neynar confirmed that, following the acquisition, the protocol will move toward a developer-focused direction. The company operates as an infrastructure provider for applications that use Farcaster as a social layer, including indexing tools, APIs, and scaling services.
Several investors publicly confirmed the capital repayment plan. Balaji Srinivasan, former Coinbase executive and an early backer of the project, stated that investors will receive the full amount of funds contributed. He also noted that the transfer of the company to Neynar preserves the protocol’s technical continuity.
Merkle Manufactory was backed by leading crypto venture firms, including a16z Crypto and Paradigm. During its independent phase, the company led the development of the protocol as a decentralized social network based on portable identities and distributed storage.
In 2024, Farcaster reached a reported valuation of $1,000 million after closing a $150 million Series A round. That deal ranked among the largest Web3 funding rounds of the year. The capital repayment will be executed following the transfer of the protocol to Neynar
