Balaji's "Network State Protocol" lands on Farcaster and the read-only treatment has users reading the room 🫠

Network School, the venture founded by Balaji Srinivasan, said Thursday it has acquired Farcaster from infrastructure provider Neynar and rebranded the reference client as the Network State Protocol, with Srinivasan describing the project as an effort to build "the Singapore of social media." The same day, multiple Farcaster users reported on X that their accounts had been switched to "read-only" status for prior posts that violated the platform's new rules, prompting criticism from figures including Kunal Gandhi, former India ecosystem lead at Eigen Labs, who said, "Obliterating accounts from the get-go for past posts is pretty silly. Goes against the ethos of decentralized social." One of the users reportedly restricted was a former Farcaster engineer.

Srinivasan, writing on Farcaster, framed the enforcement as the first step toward "law and order" within the app, arguing the platform was restoring an offline social norm. "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," he wrote. He added that "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," and said both humans and AI were used to review millions of posts, with an appeals process in place.

Under the new framework, users must opt into a "social smart contract" that authorizes the core team to set the app's rules. An accompanying "Network Code" classifies violations as digital felonies, misdemeanors or infractions, with penalties ranging from warnings and suspensions to bans, and applies retroactively to past posts. The code also outlines rewards for pro-social behavior such as teaching others, sharing projects and disagreeing civilly, though it does not specify the form of those rewards.

Network School said an open-weight AI model will enforce the rules with some human judgment calls, with a longer-term goal of warning users about potential violations before they post. Srinivasan also said the underlying Farcaster protocol will remain open and that users who decline the contract will have related options, though details on those alternatives were cut off in his post.

The overhaul marks the second ownership change for Farcaster this year, following Neynar's takeover and a planned return of roughly $180 million to investors. Co-founder Dan Romero said the platform had 250,000 monthly active users as of December 2025.