Farcaster 101
03/23/2024
gm gm everyone, and welcome to an exciting new edition of Musings of a Crypto Ghost. You may know me as @bitfloorsghost on twitter or even as @bitfloorsghost on Farcaster/Warpcast. The latter is why I write to you today.
It’s time that you get on Farcaster/Warpcast.
Now, before we start, keep in mind that you may see me, or other people, use Farcaster/Warpcast interchangeably. Think of Farcaster as the rails behind the scenes of your e-mail services, and Warpcast as gmail. Most of us use the Warpcast app to participate on Farcaster. So, when you sign up using the link above, you’re signing up for your Warpcast account. It costs 5 dollars or so which some people seem to balk at, but if you are so ingrained in the crypto community that you are reading this letter, that’s probably (hopefully) not you.
With that being said, let’s get into it.
What is Farcaster?
As always, I’d like to direct you to the source first - feel free to do your own reading here and that way you don’t fall subject to my own biases.
Overall, however, think of Farcaster as a decentralized “public social network similar to Twitter and Reddit. Users can create profiles, post "casts" and follow others. They own their accounts and relationships with other users and are free to move between different apps.”
For those of you who have used Reddit before, it’ll have a familiar feel. Instead of just “tweeting” out to the general masses, on Farcaster, there are channels - which you can think of as subreddits. You pick the channel you want to send the message in and go from there. You can subscribe to as many of you like ofc - some of my favorites are /replyguys, /wearesoearly, /itookaphoto, etc.
Why use Warpcast over X?
This is probably the #1 question people have - and in a space where we have all been burnt so many times on “the next social media app” (think Threads), why should you make the jump when all these other ones haven’t worked out?
First, I’d like to state that I joined Farcaster only a little over a month ago, so I certainly am not some expert, and I definitely don’t portend to speak for the community or anything like that. However, I think you’ll find that the fact that I only joined such a short time ago and am enjoying it so much only adds to the credibility of my claim that you should be on Warpcaster over X right now if you’re in the crypto space.
The Friends
One of the biggest things that stands out when it comes to people migrating from X or other social media over to Farcaster is how common it is to hear people talk about the amazing friends and connections they are making - especially just starting out as a smaller account. I’ve been on X for about 4-5 years now, and in that time have amassed a not-too-shabby 11,000 or so “followers” (I hate that term tbh). It’s been a lot of grinding, a lot of getting ignored, and even now it’s hard to get heard on a site that doesn’t always prioritize the best contributors on the platform (not that that’s me).
In the 1 month + I’ve been on Farcaster, I’ve already reached about 7,000 followers (once again, hate that term - I prefer friends), and it’s been a result of doing absolutely nothing different than I already did on X.
Now you might be saying, well of course you can get a lot of followers - you have plenty on X, they just migrate over. Well, that’s where you’re wrong, kiddo. I’d venture that a vast majority of my followers on Farcaster didn’t even know of me before I made the swap - so different is the community. But instead, the reason I feel like I’ve made a lot of connections here is due to one of the best draws of Farcaster overall - the community is much more intimate, insular, and genuine.
Similarly, people who are coming from X with lots of followers - if they aren’t in the trenches replying to people and being genuine, they usually fizzle out pretty quickly. The Farcaster crowd is just different. If you’re just there to extract value, farm followers, etc., you probably won’t qualify for a Power Badge and your posts will probably not get much attention.
Being straight up, 100% honest with you guys - I’ve had more fun in the past month I’ve been on Farcaster than the past 12 years in crypto, and it has nothing to do with money (although that is fun, too). I’ve made more connections and what truthfully feels like more lifelong friends by being a replyguy here than all the years I’ve been on X. I think if you ask around you’ll find I am not in the minority on that.
The Building
There is so much happening on Farcaster at all times - the signal to noise ratio is way better. One of the coolest things taking place on Farcaster are “frames.”
What’s a frame? Let’s just consult the official documents themselves:
A Frame lets you turn any cast into an interactive app.
It’s a standard for creating interactive and authenticated experiences on Farcaster. Create polls, live feeds or interactive galleries inside Warpcast or any other FC client.
Frames extend the OpenGraph standard and turn static embeds into interactive experiences. The diagram below shows the difference between a standard OG and a Frame OG inside Warpcast.
For example - in this frame, I can check my $degen balance by simply clicking a button in my feed:
Or, perhaps you want to mint an NFT directly to your wallet without exposing any information or signing anything at all:
Frames are one of the first things that really drew me into Farcaster and showed me that this wasn’t just your normal “new crypto social media app” flavor of the week.
Frames are a game changer.
The Projects
If you’ve been hanging around even CT for the past few weeks/months, you’ve probably heard about $degen tipping and Onchain Gaias. If you were on Farcaster/Warpcast, though, you probably have already gotten a fat $degen airdrop, and you also probably minted Onchain Gaias for free (floor currently .88 eth).
Did I mention my airdrop from season 2 is worth 23,000 US dollars now?
Did I also mention that small accounts like me and Tervo on Farcaster outearned what some huge accounts (like our friend Ansem) earned on X in a few months when they have 35x the followers? Or that Threadguy outearned himself even?
New social media apps do need incentives to pull users, and I’ll wait while you think of a better one than something like that.
Degen
Degen is basically the currency of Farcaster that makes the world go round - people are constantly tipping it to each other - “lmao good post, 3000 $degen.” The cool thing is that you not only can receive tips from people, but you also get a use it or lose it allowance every day (if you qualify, which you can by reading the FAQ here) to give away. You don’t get to keep any leftovers (and it also doesn’t come from your own received tips), so it really incentivizes people to out, talk to others, and spread the love.
Low effort posts usually don’t get much $degen, so once again, if you’re just farming and people spot you, you’re gonna get rekt.
For more information, check out the official site:
Onchain Gaias
Last but not least, Onchain Gaias - the brainchild of Ciniz and Anton Marrast - was born on Farcaster/Base. In fact, you couldn’t even mint one unless you did it through a frame by having a Warpcast/Farcaster account.
As one of the earlier (or at least, more vocal) supporters of this project, I have an endless amount of things to talk about in regards to it - enough that it should get its own newsletter to explain it all, to be honest. That will be coming out shortly.
In the meantime, what you should know is that it was a free mint available to people on Farcaster who collected Ciniz/Anton’s NFTs that you could mint through a Frame (again, for free). The floor has now risen to .88 as of this writing as people are desperately seeking a native Farcaster PFP - and it’s going to be much more than that.
Check out this great quick explainer to get a basic idea of what is going on:
As I mentioned above, I’ll be putting out some more content soon with more specific information on some of these Farcaster projects - Degen, Onchain Gaias, etc. In the meantime, I can’t recommend enough that you sign up and start making some friends. Hopefully I’ll see you over there.
BFG