Happy new year!
I had a lot of fun on Farcaster last year. Some highlights that come to mind:
- Trained w/ @afrochicks@metzmusic via @bountycaster
- 2x TBPN cameos via fc + @baseapp.base.eth mini-apps
- watching $chaos turn into agentic art blocks + warplets
- bought my first political memecoin via @clicker
- made my first sports bet on @frens
- meeting @randomerror.eth irl
- matts el rancho w/ @cojo.eth
- the whole $anon saga
- @noiceapp tipping
- farcaster rebrand
I just minted a petlet.
My Warplet now carries a small and reassuring best friend. It contains a bit of my Farcaster best friend's DNA: @harmonybot@sayangel
Mint yours now!
My favorite takeaway from @jpren is to always be PvE. He has consistently expressed this both individually and in the Frens product since the first day I met him.
PvP: survive and thrive against others
PvE: collaborate to grow the ecosystem
I like the idea of coining content but the top-down nature of it feels off and why I haven’t retained as a user.
I dont like deploying a token for every post, shilling it to the people that consume it, and then dump on them later by selling earnings.
It should be more bottoms-up like virtual gifting.
The creator shouldn’t have to do anything. Their community can create, buy, and sell tokens around a piece of content. Creator earns off everything and if they send it, everyone wins.
Unpopular opinion:
I wish Farcaster would acquire Neynar.
You shouldn't need to know about and sign up for another service to build on Farcaster.
Two different developer dashboards and documentation is confusing and unnecessary friction for new devs and apps.
Wabi recently announced a $20M raise for an app and network for building mini apps.
This should be Farcaster. And Neynar just shipped it below, except it's more interesting than Wabi’s promise because it's built on a social protocol and crypto instead of legacy social and payment rails.
Creating a mini app is now as easy as casting or buying a token. This should be part of the core Farcaster experience.
Last year, I told a Web3 investor that there were no real consumers in crypto and that, to succeed, you had to either serve traders, developers who served traders, or creators who served traders.
They refused to believe this. I remember sitting across from them in a room, seeing them shake their heads and hear them say, "No, no, no, it's not true."
It felt dogmatic and very frustrating. I was trying to share what I was seeing in the market and figure out how to succeed.
Farcaster betting on the wallet is smart. Most active crypto users want to make money. Most of the new people who come into crypto want to make money.
Helping people make and play with money seems like it will help Farcaster grow. And leaning into the wallet will make mini apps more interesting and more lucrative for devs, which also helps Farcaster grow.
Clanker should display tokens in your wallet (viewToken) instead of the mini app swap UI with iframe charts. It's a much cleaner interface and smoother buying experience. Actually, all mini app should do this.
