PANews reported on January 23 that Dan Romero, co-founder of the decentralized social protocol Farcaster, clarified that Farcaster has not shut down and is still operating normally. He stated that Farcaster has approximately 250,000 monthly active users (MAU) in December 2025 and has over 100,000 funded wallets. The acquiring company, Neynar, will push the protocol towards a more developer-oriented direction. He also stated that Merkel plans to fully refund approximately $180 million in funding to investors and supplement its personal housing purchase funds with proceeds from the Coinbase IPO.