TechFlow News, January 28: According to an interview with Foresight News, Vitalik Buterin stated in a conversation with Joe Zhou that SocialFi is currently in an awkward phase. Overly tight coupling between social interaction and finance has caused financial incentives to undermine the core essence of social engagement, leading users to generate large volumes of low-quality content solely in pursuit of returns.
He specifically praised Substack’s model, noting its success stems from prioritizing content curation and community building—not merely offering token issuance tools. By contrast, many top-ranked accounts on crypto-based SocialFi platforms gain attention primarily through artificial engagement boosting and hype.
Regarding Farcaster’s recent pivot from a purely social platform toward wallet functionality, Vitalik observed that this reflects the team’s ambition for massive user growth. Under its current strategy, the team believes the wallet sector holds greater potential than pure social platforms for achieving adoption at the scale of tens of millions—or even hundreds of millions—of users.
