Farcaster alternatives: chat-first onchain social apps

If you are looking for a Farcaster alternative because your community needs a room rather than a feed, this list is for you: six onchain social apps a community owner can move to in September 2026. Three are feeds with a wallet attached (Farcaster, Hey on Lens, and the feed inside Coinbase Wallet, which carried the Base App name until September 10 2026). Three are chat apps where the wallet is the account (Towns, dm.fun, Cherry). Cherry (cherry.fun) is one of the six: a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto where you sign in with a wallet, DM any wallet address, and join or create token-gated, NFT-gated and paid group chats.

How we picked these Farcaster alternatives

An app made the list if it treats a wallet or an on-chain account as identity and has been usable by the public in 2026. Bluesky, Nostr and the fediverse apps are out: they are decentralized, but nothing about them touches a chain. Protocols such as XMTP are out too: a community owner needs an app, not an SDK. Each entry covers the chains, the wallet model, feed or room, how membership is verified, and who runs it.

Farcaster, and the Warpcast question

Farcaster is a social protocol with a flagship app: a public feed of “casts”, channels, an embedded multichain wallet, mini apps inside the feed, and the Clanker token launchpad. On 11 September 2026 its site described it as “A decentralized social network”, and since January 23 2026 its stated vision has been taking builders “from idea to recurring revenue”. Base is the primary chain, with Solana, BSC, Monad, Celo and HyperEVM added through 2025 and 2026.

Ownership moved in January 2026, when Neynar, the infrastructure company most Farcaster apps ran on, acquired the protocol contracts, the app and Clanker from Merkle; the deal was announced on 21 January 2026. On August 17 2026, Neynar co-founder Rish posted that the company had “started a process to look for a new home / team to run the products”. No shutdown date exists as of September 11 2026, and the last usage figure Farcaster published is 100,000 daily active users in October 2025.

Warpcast was the name of the client app until May 2025, when the team posted “We rebranded the app! Less confusing, easier to explain.” Old warpcast.com links still resolve, so a search for a Warpcast alternative is a search for a Farcaster alternative, and Base App was another client on the same protocol.

Fit note: choose Farcaster if your community is a public conversation with builders on Base and you can live with an operator search in progress. Group chat and DMs are a small part of the product.

Farcaster on Solana

Farcaster on Solana is real and partial. Solana landed in the embedded wallet in May 2025, announced with “Farcaster now supports Solana!” and a prompt to fund $10 of SOL for airdrops from Solana teams; Solana swap fees went to 0% in August 2025. The identity model did not change: your account is a Farcaster account with wallets attached, so the Phantom wallet you already use becomes a verified address on that account, not the login itself, and Clanker plus most showcased apps stay Base-native. The room-first apps differ there: on Cherry the Solana wallet is the account.

Coinbase Wallet, the app that was Base App

Farcaster vs Base App has a short answer: the Base App feed ran on the Farcaster protocol, so it was a second client on the same network. Coinbase renamed Coinbase Wallet to Base App on July 16 2025 and pitched an everything app with that feed, XMTP chat, Farcaster-standard mini apps and trading.

Coinbase put the old name back on September 10 2026 and moved trading to the front, after CEO Brian Armstrong said in March 2026 that the social experiment “didn’t quite work”, as The Block and Decrypt reported that day. On 11 September 2026, base.app carried the “Coinbase Wallet” name with the line “Built To Trade” and sold swaps, tokenized stocks, predictions and perps; where the feed, chat and mini apps land is not stated. The wallet is strong on its own terms: a passkey smart wallet, no seed phrase, eleven networks, and 4.6 stars from 161K App Store ratings (10 September 2026).

Fit note: choose Coinbase Wallet if your members are mainstream Coinbase users who want one app for trading across chains. Token-gated rooms, paid memberships and roles were never stated for Base App. The head-to-head is Cherry vs Base App .

Hey on Lens

Lens is the other long-running onchain social graph, and Hey is its best-known app. Lens moved from Polygon to Lens Chain, a ZKsync-stack chain. In January 2026 Avara, the Aave company that built Lens, handed stewardship to Mask Network, and both sides said it was not an acquisition. On 11 September 2026, lens.xyz read “New Social Layer for Culture and Communities” and hey.xyz called itself “a decentralized social media app where users post, interact, and earn through social payments”.

Fit note: choose Hey on Lens if you want an EVM feed with a profile you own on-chain. The surface is posts and follows, not gated rooms.

Towns

Towns is the closest chat-first alternative on Base, describing itself on 11 September 2026 as “an open messaging protocol built on Base that powers private groups and decentralized finance”. Every group, a Town, is minted on-chain and every membership is an NFT; accounts get an embedded wallet, with external wallets through WalletConnect since November 25 2025. The money stack is deep: USDC memberships, one-off or recurring (since October 21 2025), in-chat trading of Base and Solana tokens, Hyperliquid perps (December 11 2025), Polymarket bets (January 5 2026), and a 0.25% trade-fee share for owners. Towns announced $46M raised on July 30 2025 and reported 450,000+ groups with 1.7M memberships on February 13 2026, flat since August 2025.

Check first: the rebuilt iOS app of February 27 2026 is “new app, new account”, and Towns’ App Store privacy details list a phone number as data linked to you.

Fit note: choose Towns if your community is Base-native, memberships as tradeable NFTs appeal, and perps in chat matter more than Solana identity.

Cherry

Cherry is room-first, and the wallet is the identity. Sign-in is a signed message (Sign In With Solana), nothing goes on-chain, and there is no gas. Display names come from .sol (also written .sns), .skr on Seeker, and AllDomains names. DMs reach any wallet address, even one that has never signed in, and are end-to-end encrypted with keys derived from your wallet; group chats are not end-to-end encrypted, by design, so moderation and bots can work. Messages sit off-chain on Cherry’s servers, which is why this page calls Cherry wallet-native, a narrower claim than decentralized.

What the room checks is the difference from a feed. Token-gated chat and NFT-gated chat use seven rule types that Cherry verifies on-chain itself (a token balance, an NFT collection, a Metaplex Core collection, a domain, a wallet balance or trading-volume threshold, the wallet app a member signed in with, and payment), up to five per group, and members are re-checked in the background: sell the token and access ends. Paid communities and channels take a one-time SOL entry fee or a daily, weekly or monthly USDC subscription, and as of 10 September 2026 the owner keeps 70%. Every public group also has an indexable storefront page (chat.cherry.fun/@seekerclub, for example). Prediction markets run via the Polymarket mini app inside Cherry (978 members on 11 September 2026), perps and tokenized stocks via the Trading Terminal mini app, and a trade another member shares in the chat can be copied in one tap.

On 11 September 2026, Seeker Club, gated by a .skr domain, had 8,637 members, 58,193 messages and 4.9 stars from 41 reviews, while SNS Club, gated by a .sol domain, had 1,455 members. Cherry is #1 on the Seeker dApp Store as of September 2026, with 4.8 stars from 4,000+ reviews.

Limits: there is no public feed, so a community that grows by strangers reading posts will miss that. Cherry started on Solana and also supports Base, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Robinhood Chain for token-gated chats and wallet DMs, so you can gate a room by ERC-20 holders on Base and DM any Ethereum address , while domains, Seeker and in-chat swaps are Solana. Mini apps also run inside Solflare, SeekerGram and Seeker Legends as of September 2026; the company is described on the about page .

Fit note: choose Cherry if your members are identified by what their wallets hold, you want gating and paid access without a verify bot, and Seeker distribution matters.

dm.fun

dm.fun, from Matrica Labs, is a Solana-only crypto social app that creates a chat room for every Solana token contract address, with a chart, a buy bot, raids and swaps inside it. Its home page said “Chat, meme, and trade. All in one.” on 11 September 2026. Wallets are embedded, made by Privy, not brought by the member. DMs, private groups and a SOL-balance requirement to join chats arrived on March 4 2026, and the app went “officially live” on web, Seeker, iOS and Android on May 21 2026 with alpha groups and USDC-billed paid groups. dm.fun reported 2,000+ new users over launch weekend (May 2026) and 150K messages (June 15 2026).

Fit note: choose dm.fun if you run a memecoin community and want a room that already exists for your CA, with raids built in. It documents no public API or mini-app SDK as of September 11 2026.

Side by side

“Not stated” means the company has made no public statement either way as of September 2026; dates are in the sections above.

Which one to pick

The rule is feed versus rooms. Pick a feed (Farcaster, Hey on Lens, or the feed inside Coinbase Wallet if it survives the rename) when your community grows by strangers finding public posts. Pick rooms (Towns, dm.fun, Cherry) when your community is a defined set of people, entry depends on what a wallet holds or pays, and moderation and roles matter more than reach. Among the room apps: Towns for a Base-native community that wants memberships as NFTs, dm.fun for a memecoin CA that wants raids, and Cherry for a Solana-first community that wants the wallet as the login, gating without a verify bot, and Seeker distribution. For the head-to-head, read Cherry vs Farcaster ; for the Seeker angle, the Seeker Club guide .

If your community fits the rooms side, create a group at chat.cherry.fun, set the rule your members must pass, and claim the handle.

FAQ

What are the best onchain social apps in 2026?

It depends on whether you want a feed or a room. Feed-first: Farcaster, Hey on Lens, and the social feed inside Coinbase Wallet, which carried the Base App name until September 10 2026. Room-first: Towns on Base, dm.fun on Solana, and Cherry on Solana, with token-gated chats and wallet DMs also on Base, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Robinhood Chain.

Is there a Farcaster alternative on Solana?

Cherry is the Solana-native option: you sign in with Phantom, Solflare, Backpack or the Seed Vault Wallet, your .sol or .skr name is your display name, and rooms are gated by SPL tokens, NFTs or domains checked on-chain. dm.fun is the other Solana-only app, one chat room per token contract address. Farcaster added Solana in May 2025 but stays Base-first.

What is onchain social?

Onchain social means a social app where your wallet or a protocol account is your identity, your membership or social graph is recorded on a blockchain or verified against one, and money moves inside the app. Farcaster and Lens put the graph itself on-chain. Cherry checks holdings and payments on-chain but stores messages off-chain, so it is wallet-native rather than decentralized.

Is Farcaster shutting down?

No shutdown has been announced as of September 11 2026. Neynar acquired Farcaster on January 21 2026 and called shutdown rumors false. On August 17 2026, co-founder Rish posted that Neynar had started a process to find a new home and team for Farcaster, Clanker and its developer products. The last usage figure published is 100,000 daily active users, October 2025.

Sources

• Farcaster
• Neynar is acquiring Farcaster , Neynar, 21 January 2026
• CoinDesk on Neynar acquiring Farcaster , 21 January 2026
• crypto.news on the operator search
• CoinDesk on Coinbase Wallet becoming Base App and The Block on the Base App launch , July 2025
• The Block on the rename back to Coinbase Wallet and Decrypt on the rebrand , 10 September 2026
• base.app
• Lens , Hey , and The Block on Mask Network taking over Lens , January 2026
• Towns
• dm.fun
• Seeker Club on Cherry , SNS Club on Cherry and the Polymarket mini app room