Farcaster is a decentralized social networking protocol that leverages smart contracts and hybrid storage technology to facilitate social connections, content sharing, and data ownership among users. It supports diverse and flexible client and application development.
In March of this year, the memecoin project Degen within the Farcaster ecosystem gained widespread attention with over 20x increase in value and a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion, making the Farcaster ecosystem a focal point of interest.
In May, Farcaster’s developer Merkle Manufactory announced the completion of a new round of financing led by Paradigm, totaling $150 million and raising the company’s valuation to $1 billion.
According to Dune data, Farcaster’s total user base has reached 540,000, with daily active users surging from 2,000 at the beginning of the year to 56,000 currently, marking a growth of over 28 times.
Farcaster is not a new social project. During the early testing phases, founder Dan leveraged personal influence and relationships to onboard many prominent OGs, including Vitalik Buterin, and selected early users through Twitter direct messages for invitation codes, resulting in a highly concentrated “elite” user base.
This approach aimed to gather a highly similar user group in the early stages, making Farcaster somewhat akin to a refined version of Twitter, where early users enjoy higher-quality posting and interaction experiences.
Additionally, early qualified users often hold influence as KOLs, possessing high social influence themselves. They may feel a certain social superiority in experiencing Farcaster early, which motivates them to discuss and spread Farcaster more actively on other platforms.
Last October, Farcaster opened registration but maintained a $5 entry barrier, effectively preventing a large influx of bot accounts and maintaining a positive atmosphere compared to Nostr’s decline due to bot proliferation.
To date, Farcaster has accumulated nearly $1.9 million in revenue from registration fees and data storage costs.
Farcaster’s two founders, Dan and Varun, previously held significant positions at Coinbase, linking Farcaster closely with the Base ecosystem. Jesse, the core leader of Base Chain, is also highly active on Farcaster.
From another perspective, over 70% of on-chain interactions among the top 500 fans on Farcaster occur on Base Chain.
Therefore, for those bullish on the Base ecosystem, Farcaster is also seen as a potential Alpha treasure trove.
Farcaster protocol data is stored in both on-chain and off-chain hubs, allowing developers to run hub nodes independently or obtain data through third-party service providers like Neynar.
All this data is permissionless, enabling developers to build various clients and applications, greatly enriching the diversity and innovation space of the Farcaster ecosystem.
Users can track ecosystem progress via the decaster website, which highlights some featured projects.
01 WrapCast
Warpcast, the primary application under the Farcaster protocol and its first client, has been developed for over a year by a top engineering team assembled by Dan. Its overall architecture is similar to traditional Web2 social software, offering a smooth user experience and currently occupying 90% of Farcaster protocol traffic.
Warpcast’s registration process is straightforward, automatically generating a wallet tied to a Farcaster ID for users. This design enables even non-crypto users to easily enter the world of blockchain, significantly lowering the cognitive threshold for new users.
For users familiar with blockchain interactions, they can also link their commonly used cryptocurrency wallets. These adjustments not only provide user-friendly experiences but also promote the growth and acceptance of the Farcaster ecosystem.
Warpcast is designed as a social platform similar to Twitter, where users can post tweets (casts), comment, retweet, and follow others. In addition to social media functions akin to Twitter, Warpcast introduces features like channels and actions, fostering more interaction methods.
For example, DEGEN utilizes user engagement within the Farcaster ecosystem to distribute tokens. Users can participate in DEGEN airdrops by following channels and interacting, and the tokens received can be used as rewards for other users.
Farcaster’s significant growth this year is closely related to the Frames feature launched in February. Frames are mini-applications embedded within Warpcast, allowing users to engage in more diverse activities without leaving Warpcast, such as minting NFTs, subscribing to content, playing games, and receiving tokens.
For instance, far.cards is a collectible card project exclusive to Farcaster users developed based on mint.club. Each user’s card attributes depend on their activity level on Farcaster, such as follower count, likes, and replies.
Card prices are determined by a bonding curve, and purchased cards can be collected or traded.
The application of far.cards can be published as Frames within tweets, allowing users who view the tweet to directly purchase the cards through the Frame without leaving the Warpcast client.
The introduction of Frames greatly enriches Warpcast’s playability, expanding Farcaster’s development beyond merely building a decentralized Twitter.
Currently, nearly 40,000 users are using the Frames feature, generating over 150,000 on-chain transactions, with 1624 interactive contracts designed.
Frame offers a user experience similar to MiniApp in the Ton ecosystem. Although Farcaster currently lacks a massive user base like Ton, attention should also be given to simple and highly distributable Frame mini-games like Not a coin on Ton.
Referencing the success of the DEGEN project in market value and dissemination capabilities, it is entirely possible for projects on Farcaster to distribute high-return tokens through Frame mini-programs.
Degen.Game is a website that aggregates Frame mini-programs where users can log in with their Farcaster identity to view the latest Frames daily and interact with them.
02 Jam
Jam is a creator economy platform based on Farcaster, converting every tweet users make on Warpcast into NFT assets similar to Friend.tech Key. Users can buy and sell each tweet, with prices determined by the bonding curve shown below.
Jam’s trading volume exceeded $10 million within 72 hours of its launch.
The first use of Jam requires spending 10 warp points, with 100 warp points given upon registering on Farcaster.
After linking their Farcaster account, users can view the feed on the homepage to find tweets worth minting. The Top list includes tweets with the highest recent transaction counts, and the Trades section displays real-time records of tweet transactions.
Unlike Friend.tech, each tweet can only have one owner at a time, eliminating the scenario of grabbing many at launch and then selling off. However, the profit approach is similar, requiring early identification and acquisition of potentially viral tweets, targeting core developers, Vitalik Buterin, KOLs, etc., to ensure subsequent buyers.
If users are KOLs or individuals with strong internet skills and adept at meme creation, they can earn a 5% transaction fee by continuously writing tweets that trigger dissemination.
Jam currently lacks tokens but has internal points, similar in gameplay and potential airdrops to Friend.tech.
03 Clubcast
ClubCast is a Farcaster application similar to Knowledge Planet, introducing token-gated casts that require users to purchase other users’ club tokens to unlock hidden content on clubcast.xyz or within Frames. Currently, developer permission is still required for use.
04 BountyCaster
BountyCaster is a task platform built on the Farcaster protocol, founded by Linda Xie (former co-founder of Scalar Capital, Coinbase product manager).
As shown below, users can tag @Bountybot when sending content on clients like Warpcast to publish tasks, which other users can then accept for corresponding rewards.
Similarly, services and prices that can be provided can also be published. Users need to log in with their Farcaster account on the BountyCaster website to view published Bounties, available services, and even job opportunities.
05 AlfaFrens
AlfaFrens is a creator economy application built on the Base ecosystem and Farcaster protocol, developed to support the flow of on-chain assets by Superfluid.
Similar to Friend.tech, users can subscribe to KOL channels and access exclusive chat rooms, and further gain tokens produced by the channel.
The platform has two currencies, $Degen and $ALFA. $Degen is an ERC-20 token on the Base chain, while $ALFA is the proprietary token of the AlfaFrens platform, currently obtainable only within the platform and non-transferable.
$Degen serves as the platform’s consumption token. When starting to use AlfaFrens, users need to prepare some $Degen to deposit into the wallet generated by the platform.
Users can subscribe to KOL channels with $Degen, divided into three levels of 500, 1000, and 1500 $Degen per month. Subscription fees are linearly consumed, and users can unsubscribe at any time. 70% of the subscription fee is distributed based on the staking ratio to users staking $ALFA in channels.
The platform generates $ALFA tokens daily, distributed evenly among subscribing users of each channel based on the $Degen received from subscriptions.
Thus, gameplay involves subscribing to popular KOL channels, staking $ALFA tokens back into the channel to earn more $Degen.
$ALFA is currently not a circulating token with no fixed pricing. Early adoption involves exchanging $Degen for $ALFA, allowing for different participation strategies based on preference for returns (more established $DEGEN value versus more undervalued $ALFA).
06 Conclusion
As people increasingly adapt to “living” online, social graphs have become important personal assets, and there is a growing demand for data sovereignty.
Web3 solutions naturally address the pain points of current Web2 social platforms, yet decentralized social domains have not seen significant success.
Many projects focus too much on decentralization, overlooking the importance of user experience. Dan pointed out in his interview with Bankless that the goal of Web3 social is not to replace Web2 but to
