SocialFi lost the hype war. That might be exactly what it needed.
The first wave made social finance look like speculation with a profile picture attached. Friend.tech faded, Farcaster struggled to turn early attention into sustainable growth and eventually changed direction. In January, Neynar acquired Farcaster and took over the protocol, client and Clanker.
Yet decentralized social itself kept moving. Lens continued building around portable social identity, while Vitalik Buterin made decentralized social one of his priorities for 2026.
That leaves SocialFi in a more interesting place: less obsessed with turning every interaction into a trade, more focused on ownership, identity and value moving between people.
That’s also where we see Dlicom: social first, with Web3 working inside the experience rather than sitting on top of it.
Follow Dlicom. SocialFi’s second chapter is still being written.
The first wave made social finance look like speculation with a profile picture attached. Friend.tech faded, Farcaster struggled to turn early attention into sustainable growth and eventually changed direction. In January, Neynar acquired Farcaster and took over the protocol, client and Clanker.
Yet decentralized social itself kept moving. Lens continued building around portable social identity, while Vitalik Buterin made decentralized social one of his priorities for 2026.
That leaves SocialFi in a more interesting place: less obsessed with turning every interaction into a trade, more focused on ownership, identity and value moving between people.
That’s also where we see Dlicom: social first, with Web3 working inside the experience rather than sitting on top of it.
Follow Dlicom. SocialFi’s second chapter is still being written.
