Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has declared his commitment to exiting centralized social media platforms by 2026. In a recent post on X, he underlined the importance of effective communication tools for societal improvement and criticized existing platforms that favor short-term engagement over the long-term well-being of users, which hinders the discovery of valuable information and constructive dialogues.

While acknowledging that there isn’t a straightforward fix to the current challenges, Buterin emphasized that fostering competition through decentralization is crucial. He believes that decentralized social media can facilitate this competition by utilizing a common data layer, permitting anyone to create their own client, thus avoiding the entrapment of users within a single platform.

Decentralized Social Media
Buterin pointed out that he has already begun using decentralized social media since the beginning of this year. In fact, every communication he’s engaged in throughout 2026 has been conducted via Firefly, a multi-client platform that allows posting and reading across various networks, including X, Lens, Farcaster, and Bluesky.

He expressed concerns about the trajectory of numerous crypto social media initiatives, noting how the addition of speculative tokens has not genuinely advanced innovation. Buterin conveyed that merging finance with social platforms isn’t inherently bad, referencing Substack as a model that champions high-quality content through subscriptions. However, he lamented that many previous crypto social experiments have concentrated on creating financial hype around creators rather than enhancing content quality.

He stated that these strategies have consistently faltered over the last decade, rewarding existing social authority at the expense of quality content, leading to the devaluation of associated tokens shortly after their introduction. Buterin further criticized the notion that forming new markets and assets is universally advantageous due to the information they generate, arguing that this assertion is often at odds with decisions that undermine users’ capacity to reap benefits.

He concluded that decentralized social networks should be engineered and managed by teams primarily oriented toward resolving social challenges and enhancing online interactions.

256 ETH Donation
In November, Buterin contributed a total of 256 ETH to bolster the progress of encrypted messaging tools. Specifically, he allocated 128 ETH each to Session and SimpleX, initiatives dedicated to providing end-to-end encrypted communication. He characterized encrypted messaging as vital for upholding digital privacy and highlighted the necessity for unregulated account creation and safeguarding metadata privacy, which are still areas that require enhancements.

While recognizing that these platforms are still evolving, Buterin is actively advocating for privacy-centric communication solutions and encourages more developers to tackle the remaining technical hurdles.