Balaji Srinivasan’s Network School has officially taken the helm of the decentralized social platform Farcaster, instituting an immediate wave of policy enforcement that has sparked swift debate across the broader crypto and Web3 community.
Announced on Thursday, the acquisition sees Network School take over Farcaster from Neynar, effectively rebranding the platform as the Network State Protocol. However, the transition’s introductory phase was marked by an immediate enforcement wave. Several prominent web3 figures and users took to social media platform X on the same day to report that their Farcaster accounts had been abruptly restricted to "read-only" status. The restrictions were reportedly tied to historical posts that ran afoul of the platform’s newly implemented code of conduct.
The sudden crackdown quickly drew criticism from decentralized social media advocates and industry participants who questioned the retroactive nature of the moderation.
"I know most of these folks. They shaped Farcaster with their quirks and wit," said Kunal Gandhi, former India ecosystem lead at Eigen Labs, in a post shared on X. "Obliterating accounts from the get-from-the-get-go for past posts is pretty silly. Goes against the ethos of decentralized social."
Among the reportedly affected accounts was a former engineer at Farcaster, highlighting the depth of the initial moderation sweep across early and foundational community members.
This dramatic leadership shift represents the latest chapter in Farcaster’s ongoing search for a sustainable and stable strategic direction. The platform is changing hands for the second time this year, navigating a competitive landscape for decentralized communication. Co-founder Dan Romero previously reported that Farcaster maintained approximately 250,000 monthly active users as of December 2025, underlining the significant user base now navigating the transition under Network School’s stewardship.
Balaji wants the “Singapore of social media”
Detailing the rationale behind the sweeping moderation actions, Srinivasan published a post on Farcaster on Thursday framing the bans as foundational steps toward transforming the reference application into what he termed "the Singapore of social media." According to Srinivasan, the objective is to cultivate a positive-sum community of techno-optimists operating under a clear, universally understood code of conduct.
Srinivasan emphasized that establishing immediate "law and order" was a necessary prerequisite for this vision. Drawing a comparison to physical world norms, he argued that standard offline civility should be extended to digital environments.
"In the pre-Internet world, it was simply unheard of to run up to a stranger and start cursing at them. We’re restoring that offline norm online," Srinivasan stated.
To justify the aggressive enforcement approach, Srinivasan invoked political comparisons, pointing to foreign policy and domestic crime strategies.
"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 wrote.
According to the Network School leadership, a combination of human review and automated artificial intelligence systems was deployed to scan millions of legacy posts to identify accounts targeted for bans. Srinivasan noted that an official appeals process has been established to review cases where users believe their accounts were restricted in error.
Rewarding “pro-social behavior”
Under the operational model envisioned by Network School for the Network State Protocol, users must explicitly opt into a "social smart contract." This agreement authorizes the platform’s core administrative team to establish and enforce the application’s governing rules. Accompanying this contract is a comprehensive "Network Code," which categorizes policy violations into digital felonies, misdemeanors, and minor infractions. Penalties scale accordingly, ranging from formal warnings and temporary suspensions to permanent account bans, with these disciplinary rules applying retroactively to historical post histories as well as future activity.
In tandem with punitive measures, the code outlines a system designed to incentivize constructive participation. Promises of rewards are extended to users who demonstrate pro-social behavior, such as educating community members, sharing project developments, and engaging in civil disagreements. However, specific details regarding the exact nature, form, or distribution mechanism of these promised rewards remain unspecified in the current documentation.
Network School announced that an open-weight artificial intelligence model will be primarily responsible for enforcing the rules, supplemented by manual judgment calls from moderation staff. Long-term technical goals include developing proactive warning systems designed to notify users of potential rule violations before they publish content.
Despite the strict rules enforced within the primary reference client, the core architectural properties of Farcaster are designed to remain decentralized. The underlying Farcaster protocol itself remains open, meaning users who decline to sign the newly instituted social contract retain full control of their cryptographic keys, funds, follower graphs, and historic post archives. While these dissenting users will find their access to the main application restricted to a read-only mode, they retain the technical ability to migrate their identities and data to alternative, competing client applications built on top of the protocol.
Srinivasan characterized this architecture of freedom to join, leave, or build competing interfaces as a manifestation of "decentralized democracy."
The long-term ambitions of the initiative stretch far beyond digital software and social media interactions. Network School has stated that its overarching goal is for the digital community to eventually manifest physically through organized real-world meetups, pop-up events, and temporary gatherings, with the ultimate vision of evolving into fully realized startup cities and sovereign network states.
The acquisition of Farcaster by Network School also arrives during a period of institutional restructuring for Srinivasan’s organization. Months prior to the Farcaster takeover, Malaysian regulatory authorities revoked the business license of Network School’s related entities in Forest City and ordered operations to cease immediately, citing alleged compliance and premises-use violations. In response to the regulatory setback, Srinivasan subsequently announced an agreement to relocate and establish a new campus presence in Kazakhstan.
