Balaji Srinivasan’s Network School has officially assumed control of the decentralized social platform Farcaster, marking its territory with an immediate wave of bans that has sparked intense backlash across the broader decentralized web. The high-profile transition represents the second time this year that the platform has changed hands, raising fresh questions about the delicate balance between content moderation, digital law and order, and the foundational ethos of decentralization.
On Thursday, Network School announced that it had successfully acquired Farcaster from Neynar, immediately initiating a comprehensive rebrand of the platform as the Network State Protocol. Alongside the acquisition came a swift policy enforcement action. Several prominent web3 users took to X, formerly Twitter, to report that their Farcaster accounts had been abruptly restricted to a "read-only" status. According to the platform’s new leadership, these restrictions stemmed from historical posts that allegedly violated newly instituted community guidelines.
The retrospective enforcement drew immediate criticism from industry figures who argued that penalizing users for legacy content undermines the core principles of open, decentralized networks. Kunal Gandhi, the former India ecosystem lead at Eigen Labs, voiced his disapproval online, pointing out that many of the targeted individuals had spent years helping build the platform’s culture. "I know most of these folks. They shaped Farcaster with their quirks and wit," Gandhi said in an online post. "Obliterating accounts from the get-from for past posts is pretty silly. Goes against the ethos of decentralized social."
The sudden overhaul is the latest chapter in Farcaster’s ongoing search for a sustainable, long-term operational direction. The platform, which was co-founded by Dan Romero, reported having approximately 250,000 monthly active users as of December 2025. However, under Network School’s stewardship, the application is undergoing a dramatic ideological shift, trading its previous laissez-faire approach for a much more rigid and structured governance framework.
Balaji Wants the "Singapore of Social Media"
In a detailed post shared directly to Farcaster on Thursday, Srinivasan outlined the rationale behind the sweeping bans and the broader vision for the platform. He explained that the enforcement actions were a foundational step toward transforming the reference application into what he termed "the Singapore of social media." According to Srinivasan, this vision envisions a positive-sum community populated by techno-optimists who strictly operate under a shared, codified code of conduct.
Srinivasan emphasized that establishing immediate "law and order" was a necessary prerequisite for building a thriving digital society. Drawing comparisons to physical world norms, he argued that online interactions should mirror offline civility. "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 wrote.
To justify the aggressive initial purge of accounts, Srinivasan invoked a real-world political comparison, likening the platform’s moderation strategy to anti-crime policies in Central America. "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 stated.
According to the new leadership, both advanced artificial intelligence systems and human reviewers were deployed to scan millions of historical posts to identify and filter out users who violated the updated standards. Network School confirmed that an appeals process has been established to review cases for individuals who believe their accounts were restricted in error.
Rewarding "Pro-Social Behavior"
Under the Network School’s blueprint for the Network State Protocol, users are now required to opt into a "social smart contract." This agreement formally authorizes the platform’s core team to establish, update, and enforce the application’s governing rules. Accompanying this contract is the "Network Code," a formal rulebook that categorizes infractions into digital felonies, misdemeanors, and minor infractions. Penalties for transgressions span a continuum from formal warnings and temporary suspensions to permanent account bans, with the rules applying retroactively to past activity as well as prospective posts.
At the same time, the Network Code attempts to incentivize positive engagement by promising tangible rewards for constructive behavior. The framework explicitly highlights activities such as educating other community members, sharing collaborative projects, and engaging in civil disagreements as virtues to be encouraged, though specific details regarding the nature of these rewards have not yet been fully detailed.
Network School has indicated that an open-weight artificial intelligence model, supplemented by manual human oversight, will handle ongoing enforcement. The long-term technical roadmap includes implementing predictive warning systems designed to alert users to potential rule violations before they publish their content.
Despite the stringent rules governing the main reference app, the underlying Farcaster protocol itself remains open. Users who choose not to accept the newly introduced social smart contract retain absolute ownership of their cryptographic keys, funds, follower graphs, and historical post data. This architecture allows dissenting users to migrate their profiles and data to alternative client applications built on the same underlying protocol. Srinivasan characterized this structural flexibility as an embodiment of "decentralized democracy," where participants retain the absolute right to join, leave, or construct competing clients.
The long-term ambitions for the project extend far beyond the boundaries of digital social media. Network School’s overarching objective is to leverage its online community as a foundational incubator that will eventually manifest in the physical world through organized meetups, pop-up events, and, ultimately, the development of independent startup cities and fully realized network states.
The acquisition of Farcaster by Network School also arrives during a period of transition for Srinivasan’s organization on the geopolitical front. Earlier this year, Malaysian authorities revoked the business license held by Network School’s Forest City project and ordered the initiative to cease local operations, citing alleged licensing and premises-use infractions. In response to that setback, Srinivasan subsequently announced an agreement to relocate and establish a new campus in Kazakhstan.
