Balaji Srinivasan’s Network School has officially taken the reins of the decentralized social platform Farcaster, kicking off its stewardship with an immediate and sweeping wave of account restrictions that has sparked intense debate and backlash across the decentralized social media landscape.
Network School announced on Thursday that it had successfully acquired Farcaster from Neynar, immediately initiating a comprehensive rebrand to the Network State Protocol. Alongside the transition, numerous users took to competing platforms like X to report that their Farcaster accounts had been abruptly restricted to a "read-only" status. According to the platform’s new administration, these restrictions were imposed retroactively as a consequence of past posts that violated its newly established rules and code of conduct.
The sudden crackdown alienated several prominent web3 figures who had long been active on the protocol. Kunal Gandhi, the former India ecosystem lead at Eigen Labs, voiced his frustration publicly on X regarding the retroactive nature of the moderation sweep.
"I know most of these folks. They shaped Farcaster with their quirks and wit," Kunal Gandhi said. "Obliterating accounts from the get-from for past posts is pretty silly. Goes against the ethos of decentralized social."
This sweeping structural overhaul represents the latest chapter in Farcaster’s ongoing quest to find a sustainable operational and cultural direction. The decentralized network is changing hands for the second time this year, navigating a turbulent path as it attempts to scale. Co-founder Dan Romero previously reported that the platform maintained approximately 250,000 monthly active users as of December 2025.
Balaji Wants the "Singapore of Social Media"
In a detailed post shared directly to Farcaster on Thursday, Srinivasan defended the sweeping bans, framing them as a necessary foundational step toward his grander vision for the reference application. He articulated an ambition to transform the platform into "the Singapore of social media"—envisioning a positive-sum community of techno-optimists operating under a strictly enforced, shared code of conduct.
According to Srinivasan, the immediate institution of "law and order" was prioritized to reshape the digital public square. Drawing parallels to physical interactions, he argued that online behavior should mirror offline societal norms.
"In the pre-Internet world, it was simply unheard of to run up to a stranger and start cursing at them," Srinivasan said. "We’re restoring that offline norm online."
To justify the aggressive pruning of accounts, Srinivasan invoked political comparisons regarding targeted enforcement against repeat offenders to establish baseline community standards.
"Much like how President Bukele jailed a small fraction of repeat offenders to essentially eliminate crime in El Salvador, we’ve moderated out the small fraction of repeat offenders that have been muted or blocked by many accounts to stop random attacks within this Farcaster reference client," he added.
Srinivasan noted that a combination of human review and artificial intelligence systems was deployed to scan millions of historical posts to identify accounts marked for banning. He also confirmed that an official appeals process has been established for users seeking to contest their restrictions.
Rewarding "Pro-Social Behavior"
Under Network School’s newly implemented vision for the Network State Protocol, users must explicitly opt into a "social smart contract." This agreement authorizes the platform’s core team and administrative systems to establish and enforce the application’s rules. The accompanying "Network Code" explicitly categorizes digital transgressions into distinct legalistic tiers, classifying violations as digital felonies, misdemeanors, or minor infractions. Punishments mapped to these violations range from formal warnings and temporary suspensions to permanent account bans, with the regulatory framework applying retroactively to historical posts as well as future activity.
In tandem with punitive measures, the code outlines promises of rewards designed to incentivize constructive participation. These positive reinforcements are intended for users who engage in pro-social activities such as educating community members, sharing active projects, and maintaining civil discourse during disagreements, though the protocol has yet to publicly specify the precise nature or mechanics of these rewards.
Network School has indicated that an open-weight artificial intelligence model will shoulder the primary responsibility of applying these moderation rules, supplemented by necessary manual judgment calls from human operators. Looking ahead, the development team intends to implement preventative features designed to warn users of potential rule violations before they publish content.
Despite the introduction of strict centralized rules within the reference application, the underlying Farcaster protocol itself remains open. Users who decline to sign the newly instituted social smart contract retain their cryptographic keys, funds, follower graphs, and historical post data. While their access to the main reference app will be permanently restricted to a read-only state, these users maintain the technical freedom to migrate their data and build or join competing client applications. Srinivasan described this architectural flexibility—the ability to freely join, leave, or construct alternative clients—as an embodiment of "decentralized democracy."
The long-term ambitions for the project extend far beyond the boundaries of digital software and social media networking. Network School has stated that its ultimate objective is to allow the online community to manifest physically through organized meetups and pop-up events, with the long-range goal of evolving into fully realized startup cities and sovereign network states.
This major corporate acquisition and subsequent protocol overhaul arrives just months after Network School faced regulatory setbacks in Southeast Asia. Malaysian authorities previously revoked the organization’s Forest City business license and issued directives to cease local operations, citing alleged licensing discrepancies and premises-use violations. In the wake of that regional setback, Srinivasan swiftly announced a subsequent agreement to establish a physical campus in Kazakhstan.
