A True Account of the Collapse of Decentralized Social Networks: From High Hopes to a Disappointing Exit

Deng Tong, Jinse Finance

On November 16, 2025, decentralized social media application Hey (formerly Lenster) announced it would cease development due to limited funding. The official statement indicated that the combined annual profit of Hey Pro and Hey Names was approximately $41,000, insufficient to support the team operating the platform at the scale expected by users.

The decentralized social media sector was once extremely hot, with many star projects achieving great success, but ultimately succumbing to a dismal fate.

This article reviews those failed decentralized social media projects.

I. Hey

Hey, originally named Lenster, was created by Yogi Nth in March 2022. Yogi Nth is also a front-end engineer who previously worked on Aave and Lens Protocol.

Hey was initially positioned as a social client similar to X.

Later renamed Hey.xyz, it became a decentralized social application focused on the Lens protocol ecosystem. It emphasizes decentralization and permissionless access, with its core advantage being that users retain ownership of their digital identities, content, and social graphs. Users can publish content with rich media content, comment, and share, and experience mainstream social features such as real-time notifications. Its unique feature is cross-platform compatibility; the fans and content users accumulate on Hey can continue to be used in other Lens-compatible applications without needing to rebuild a social network. Hey posted on X that the Hey project was discontinued because its annual revenue was only $41,000. Leaving the Hey project was a difficult decision, but the reality is simple: the platform could not be self-sufficient. Hey Pro and Hey Names were always options. Of the 850,000 users, only about 2,000 opted for the Pro version, costing $20 each, totaling approximately $40,000 per year. Hey Names brought in about $1,000 more. So, the total annual revenue was approximately $41,000, which is insufficient to support the platform operating at the scale users expect, unless we personally fund it. Over 99% of users use Hey completely free. Hey has never promised tokens or airdrops. It was never designed for mining. It's a Lens-based social client, not a protocol, a vault, or a place where we control funds. We've been releasing it continuously for four years, adding new features, and always maintaining complete transparency. Even in the event of unforeseen circumstances, we publicly handle refunds and explanations. The code is always open source. There are no contractual restrictions, no hidden incentives; it's simply a community tool, but it has reached its funding limits. Thank you to everyone who has supported us along the way. The community can continue to shape the future direction of development.

Hopefully the above explanation answers all questions.

Hey, as the front-end application of the Lens protocol ecosystem, relies on the user base of the entire Lens ecosystem. However, the Lens protocol itself subsequently experienced stagnant user growth due to a decline in popularity, which directly led to Hey's revenue predicament.

II. Friend.tech

Friend.tech, co-founded by two anonymous developers, 0xracerAlt and Shrimppepe, was once a wildly popular Web3 decentralized social platform. It quickly gained popularity with its innovative model of tokenizing social influence, but unfortunately shut down after only one year and one month.

In August 2023, Friend.tech was officially launched on the Base blockchain, gaining significant attention on its first day.

In November, the Twitter account of founder 0xracerAlt suddenly became inaccessible, sparking doubts about the project. In May 2024, version V2 was launched, along with the platform's native token, FRIEND, in an attempt to salvage the declining fortunes through version iterations and token issuance. FRIEND experienced a meteoric rise upon its debut, with its price approaching an all-time high of $3 in May 2024. However, it subsequently declined, currently trading at $0.02443. In September 2024, Friend.tech announced that project management and ownership parameters had been set to an empty Ethereum address, signifying a relinquishment of control over smart contracts and the platform's near-shutdown. Friend.tech once enjoyed a period of unparalleled success compared to other decentralized social platforms: 136,000 daily active users on its first day, protocol fees exceeding 5,000 ETH within a month of launch, over 4.59 million transactions, and a peak locked value of $51.68 million. However, its popularity waned rapidly, with daily active users dropping to a low of only 15 in July 2024. As mentioned earlier, the protocol fees exceeding 5,000 ETH within a month of launch prematurely demoralized the project team, and even the founder's account went missing, leading to a loss of user confidence. Furthermore, Friend.tech was rife with speculation: users could purchase KOL keys to access private chat rooms and exclusive content, with prices increasing with the number of buyers. This attracted a large number of speculators rather than genuine social users. They snapped up KOLs' keys and then sold them at high prices for profit, resulting in an excessively high barrier to entry for new users and making it difficult for them to join. When no one was willing to take over the speculative activities, the platform's decline was inevitable.

III. Steemit

Steemit was co-founded by Daniel Larimer (BM, also the founder of EOS) and Ned Scott. In January 2016, Steemit completed its core creation work, launched initially in March, and officially released to the public in July. It quickly attracted creators' attention with its "content creation rewards tokens" model. In January 2017, registered users exceeded 125,000, with 4,400 daily active users; in June of the same year, registered users further exceeded 200,000. Afterwards, its popularity continued to decline, and it gradually faded from public view.

III. Steemit

Steemit was co-founded by Daniel Larimer (BM, also the founder of EOS) and Ned Scott. In January 2016, Steemit completed its core creation work, launched initially in March, and officially released to the public in July. It quickly attracted creators' attention with its "content creation rewards tokens" model. In January 2017, registered users exceeded 125,000, with 4,400 daily active users; in June of the same year, registered users further exceeded 200,000. Afterwards, its popularity continued to decline, and it gradually faded from public view.

In March 2017, core technical member Daniel Larimer left Steemit, slowing its technical development (after leaving Steemit, BM devoted himself to the EOS project). Furthermore, Steemit's token reward mechanism, which attracted a large user base, has steadily declined since reaching an all-time high of over $8 in January 2018, currently sitting at only $0.07791, failing to attract users. In addition, facing competition from rising stars like Farcaster and Friend.tech, Steemit has once again failed to recover.

IV. Voice

In June 2019, Dan Larimer launched Voice, a decentralized social platform, positioning it as an application that could change the industry landscape, directly competing with mainstream social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

In 2020, Block.one invested in Voice, bringing the total investment to $300 million. In 2021, due to poor performance, Block.one announced that it would upgrade and transform Voice into an NFT social platform for creators, where users can create and trade digital assets in various formats.

However, the transformation ultimately failed to save Voice. In September 2023, Voice officially announced that it would gradually cease operations within a few months, simultaneously disabling new user registration and the trading market, and planning to launch an NFT asset migration service. Existing users' assets would be retained until December 2024. This meant Voice completely disappeared from the decentralized social media arena. Although Voice was created by BM, a prominent figure in the blockchain industry at the time, it still could not escape its fate of demise. First, Voice's functional design and user experience as a decentralized social platform were often inferior to traditional social platforms; second, after transitioning to the NFT arena, it lacked competitiveness compared to established competitors such as OpenSea. Furthermore, the NFT market declined significantly after 2022, and Voice, affected by the sluggish economic environment, struggled to recover. Coupled with an initial investment of up to $300 million, but ultimately minimal revenue, it was difficult to continue operating. V. Phaver The founder and CEO of the Phaver platform is Joonatan Lintala. Phaver was officially established in 2020, initially positioned to break down the social barriers between Web2 and Web3 through a Web2.5 model. In 2023, it emerged during the SocialFi boom, completing a $7 million seed round of financing in October of the same year. In September 2024, the platform entered the market through TGE, launching its native token, SOCIAL. In April 2025, according to DeFi researcher Ignas, the social media application Phaver had ceased operations, and its token price had fallen by 99% since the TGE launch in September 2024. Phaver team members stated that: firstly, technical issues with TGE and the airdrop prevented users from claiming their tokens in a timely manner, causing FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt); secondly, Phaver paid over $1 million in fees for listing on 5 CEXs; and thirdly, due to low market sentiment, the team did not sell tokens during TGE, resulting in insufficient operating funds. As a Finnish company, Phaver also needs to pay severance pay for 1 to 2 months of employees.

VI. DeSo

DeSo, originally named BitClout, was created by Nader Al-Naji. In May 2019, Nader Al-Naji built DeSo's dedicated underlying blockchain. In March 2021, it officially launched under the name BitClout after ending its private beta version.

In May 2024, DeSo underwent a Revolution Proofof Stake consensus upgrade on its testnet.

After the consensus upgrade, it supports features such as 500 posts per second (10% of the X scale), a maximized burn fee (BMF) algorithm, a 1-second confirmation time, 20% annualized return for staking DESO, and permissionless validators. The core model of DeSo is to tokenize creators, allowing users to purchase celebrity or creator tokens to participate in social interactions. This model leans more towards financial speculation than genuine social needs. Furthermore, serious privacy issues surfaced early on, with the platform allegedly scraping and copying a large number of Twitter celebrities' personal data without authorization and creating corresponding platform tokens for these celebrities, drawing much negative feedback. Conclusion: The decentralized social networking sector once developed rapidly, with star projects like Friend.tech attracting considerable attention, but this was accompanied by rapid iteration and elimination. Many projects enjoyed immense popularity and hype upon their rise, but ultimately faded away after the hype subsided. For these decentralized social projects, immature technology, poor user experience, credibility crises, and fierce market competition can all be the final straw that breaks the camel's back. Short-term hype cannot guarantee long-term survival. The key challenge for decentralized social projects is balancing current viability with long-term value creation.