Neynar Announces Search for New Owner for Farcaster; Protocol Revenue Plummets 99% Just Seven Months After Acquisition

According to The Defiant, Rish Mukherji, co-founder of Neynar, the current operator of decentralized social protocol Farcaster, announced on August 17 that the company has initiated a process to seek a new team to take over Farcaster, token launchpad Clanker, and its own developer platform, and Neynar staff will be laid off accordingly. This marks the second change of ownership for Farcaster within 2026. In January of this year, the original founding team Merkle Manufactory transferred the protocol contracts, codebase, Farcaster App, and Clanker entirely to Neynar, and original founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan subsequently joined Tempo, a payment public chain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm. The sharp deterioration of Farcaster's economic data is the core reason for this sale. According to DefiLlama data, protocol fees fell from $35.43 million in Q1 2026 to $4.67 million in Q2, recorded only $376,700 in the third quarter as of August 17, and revenue in the past 30 days shrank further to $120,000. Meanwhile, CLANKER token buybacks supported by protocol revenue have completely stopped, with CLANKER currently trading at 12