Neynar Hunts New Owner for Farcaster Just Seven Months After Buying It

Neynar has begun looking for a new team to run the decentralized social protocol Farcaster, the token launcher Clanker and its own developer platform, co-founder Rish Mukherji said on Aug. 17, just seven months after acquiring the protocol from Merkle Manufactory, The Defiant reported. The move puts Farcaster into its second ownership handoff of 2026 and leaves it without a funded operator, as Neynar plans to return what remains of its balance sheet and disperse its staff. Mukherji said the company had started a process to find a new home for the products, adding that Farcaster had seemed a good fit earlier this year but that much had changed and Neynar was "not the right fit for what's needed next."Farcaster's economics collapsed under Neynar's ownership, according to The Defiant, citing DefiLlama. Combined protocol fees fell from $35.43 million in the first quarter of 2026 to $4.67 million in the second and just $376,740 between July 1 and Aug. 17, with cumulative fees since launch at $94.1 million. Fee-funded buybacks have stopped, and CLANKER traded at $12.29, down 3.6%, with a $12.12 million market cap. Merkle Manufactory, built by Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, transferred Farcaster to Neynar on Jan. 21 and had planned to return the full $180 million raised to investors; Romero and Srinivasan later joined Stripe- and Paradigm-incubated payments chain Tempo. Neynar itself raised $11 million in a 2024 Series A but has not disclosed what it paid for Farcaster. Mukherji invited interested parties to reach out, and Base-based onchain lottery Megapot publicly replied that it is interested.