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About Neynar
Neynar is the developer infrastructure platform for the Farcaster social protocol, serving social apps, games, commerce and AI agent teams. It runs its own high-availability hubs and offers indexed read and write APIs, webhooks and SQL queries, so developers can pull profiles, follow graphs and casts without syncing the gossip network themselves; Sign-In with Neynar uses managed signers to sponsor storage, giving new users write access without paying gas, and the index is organised by FID, which lets apps run follow suggestions, notifications and sybil filtering off the same store.
Since taking over the Farcaster protocol and client, its role has shifted from third-party provider to protocol steward, with products spanning a low-code App Studio, AI agent deployment and a mini app framework. Compared with generic node services, it binds the social graph, onchain assets and authentication to one FID system, so an application can retrieve relationships and wallet data in a single call.
Founded in 2021 by Coinbase alumni Rishav Mukherji and Manan Patel, Neynar initially built applications on Farcaster before pivoting into a developer platform providing hosted hubs, REST APIs, and account infrastructure.
In May 2024, Neynar completed an $11 million Series A led by Haun Ventures, with participation from USV, a16z CSX, and Coinbase Ventures. Notably, Farcaster founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan were early backers, cementing the symbiotic relationship between the two companies.
The defining milestone came in January 2026, when Neynar acquired Farcaster and Clanker from Merkle Manufactory. This marked a transition from infrastructure provider to protocol owner, consolidating the protocol layer, application layer, and infrastructure under one roof. The acquisition followed Farcaster's pivot from social-first to wallet-first strategy and its declining revenue, positioning Neynar's B2B SaaS model as the sustainable economic foundation for the ecosystem.
On 21 January 2026 Neynar acquired Farcaster from Merkle Manufactory, taking over protocol maintenance, the client and Clanker, with Jack and part of the Clanker team joining. On 7 April Farcaster launched Snaps, lightweight interactive apps embedded directly in casts that developers can build from the documentation.
On 9 April the Base App retired the Farcaster mini-app spec and Neynar infrastructure as planned, moving to standard web apps with wallet connection, while the Neynar developer platform kept running independently. On 15 October Neynar said it would transfer the Farcaster app, protocol codebase and related products to Network School, founded by Balaji Srinivasan, with co-founders Rish and Manan departing and most of the team moving with the project.
Future strategy and roadmap: Neynar retains its developer platform and API business, supplying onchain social data to social and agent applications, while Farcaster under Network School pivots toward a network-state narrative with onchain access credentials and proof of personhood.
Rishav “Rish” Mukherji — Co-founder and former CEO; Harvard graduate and former Group Product Manager at Coinbase; departed in October 2026.
Manan Patel — Co-founder and former CTO; previously an Engineering Manager at Coinbase, with prior engineering experience at Uber; departed in October 2026.