A lot happened on Farcaster in the fast-moving month of April, with daily active users reaching new heights, consistently around 40k, making it an increasingly unignorable protocol/community in the crypto world. Of course, much of this growth may likely be driven by memcoin speculation and product innovation within the ecosystem. Despite the inevitable impact on Farcaster-related assets from the overall downturn in the crypto market due to various risk factors, many who hold these assets welcomed April with joy and bade it farewell with sadness. Nevertheless, there were many memorable highlights on Farcaster worth reflecting on.

As I started to reflect, I realized that the various public chains, dApps, and tokens related to the Farcaster ecosystem are intricately interconnected, each containing elements of the others. My first step was to try and break them down, selecting a few different perspectives such as the protocol, products, and ecosystems for discussion.

Being an open protocol

First, let's start with the Farcaster protocol and its primary client, Warpcast, both of which are led by the team. This month, Farcaster introduced the Actions feature, a significant update following the Channels and Frames features. The Actions feature allows users to interact with Casts by clicking buttons beneath them to perform functions like liking, translating, tipping conveniently, viewing information, and more, including engaging with Frames for further interactions.

In addition to this, it’s interesting to note that @nbragg quickly developed a game called hotpotato based on the Actions feature. Players can pass the potato by clicking the “pass the potato” Action under a friend's cast. The player who receives the potato must pass it on quickly, and the player whose potato stops for the shortest duration wins. I'm looking forward to seeing more social games developed on Farcaster (either onchain social games or onframe-gaming) that make full use of the Actions feature and integrate with other functions like Frames to expand their gameplay within Farcaster, enhancing the spread and viral promotion of their main game within the platform.

The team continues to work diligently on many small details to enhance user experience (see updates at /fc-updates), such as setting up a Priority mode in Warpcast for feeds and notifications to minimize the impact of spammy accounts. It is precisely these efforts that have helped maintain a positive community atmosphere on Farcaster over time.

Meanwhile, the third-party client ecosystem of Farcaster continues to expand robustly, providing vital alternatives when Warpcast experiences downtime due to heavy traffic. This underscores the openness of the Farcaster protocol as a platform. One notable recent addition is nook by @slokh, which currently on mobile allows users to create “Nooks” and “Feeds” with customizable rules for curating content streams based on keywords, users, or channels, thus enabling users to track topics of interest.

Additionally, more clients are increasingly supporting both the Lens and Farcaster social protocols. The Lens ecosystem's Phaver followed Buttrfly in actively embracing the Farcaster ecosystem. They've chosen to host events on Farcaster and claim they will support cross-posting between Lens and Farcaster, which I believe demonstrates that those who know the times are truly wise. The client Firefly, even used by Vitalik, not only supports synchronizing posts across Farcaster, Lens, and Twitter, but has also enhanced its features for aggregating social media platforms, making it easier to browse articles from Mirror and the native Farcaster blogging platform Paragraph, becoming a comprehensive on-chain social media aggregator.

David Furlong developed a personal homepage for Farcaster at farcaster.in, which conveniently links to individual homepages on Warpcast and other clients such as Supercast, Firefly, and Yup. For a more extensive browsing of Farcaster ecosystem clients, the one-stop navigation site Decaster, developed by @haole, features clients, dApps, common tools, developer tools, common Channels, Frames, Actions, and more.

Being a social layer

The primary tokens and NFT assets within the Farcaster ecosystem are currently issued on the Base chain, which is also part of the Coinbase ecosystem. To date, Farcaster has not only become a launchpad for memecoins but also serves as an incubator for numerous L3s and even L4s. It naturally acts as the Social Layer for these memecoins across L2s, L3s, and L4s, supporting asset issuance, operations, promotion, and community engagement.

Degen

Let's start by talking about $DEGEN, the leading memecoin within both the Farcaster ecosystem and the Base chain. Some say that "$DEGEN can no longer be considered just a memecoin because it possesses various utilities," implying that true memecoins have no practical use. However, according to Li Jin’s classification of memecoins, $DEGEN qualifies as a community-first memecoin, also known as a scene memecoin:

Tokens that launch as a scheling point for distributed communities with shared valuesand missions. The token can play a role in enforcing rituals/norms.

In this sense, many memecoins rooted in the Farcaster community can be called scene memecoins, as the community itself and its open framework readily facilitate the design of various applications for memecoins, opening up vast imaginative possibilities.

As a leading scene memecoin, $DEGEN is deeply embedded in the Farcaster community, actively interacting with various apps and projects within the Farcaster ecosystem. It already supports a wide array of use cases, allowing for sharing, tipping, minting, trading, and building with $DEGEN.

• Share with $DEGEN: This entails spreading $DEGEN as a meme, featuring the iconic top hat and creative derivatives built around this element, including various channels, frames, NFTs, and tokens. The chapter "Memes and Symbols of $DEGEN" in The $DEGEN Archives provides a more detailed description.

• Tip with $DEGEN: This is the form of $DEGEN's second airdrop, where each person has a daily allowance to tip others in the comment sections of their casts. The total amount tipped accumulates towards the number of airdrops received. Third-party clients like Supercast and Degencast support quick-tip buttons, and there are now convenient Actions for tipping as well.

• Mint with $DEGEN: Both Zora and Highlight, two NFT minting platforms, now support minting NFTs with $DEGEN. Additionally, Zora has a dedicated explore page for NFTs that can be minted with $DEGEN.

• Trade with $DEGEN: Following the short video app Drakula, various Farcaster ecosystem apps like the sports club app Bracket.game and the prediction platform Perl.xyz, among others, now support trading with $DEGEN. In the upcoming chapter on FarFi, you'll see that the majority of SocialFi products in the Farcaster ecosystem use $DEGEN as their currency of circulation. The Jeeves app also lists various dApps that support $DEGEN transactions.

• Build with $DEGEN: This involves using Syndicate to launch and develop on Degen L3 based on the Base chain. Naturally, Farcaster has become the social layer supporting Degen L3. Since its launch at the end of last month, it has quickly attracted a significant user base. The launch of memecoins such as $WAKE, $GOAT, and $ATH, as well as the FarCats Degenesis NFT, have rapidly fermented within the Farcaster community, gaining substantial popularity in a short period. Notably, ATH ᖽ, born from an OG Degen Chain group chat on Warpcast, even claims to drive the growth of the Degen L3 ecosystem and its community by building a DAO, games, infra, and ATH L4 based on Degen L3.

Base

Over the past month, Jesse Pollak, head of Base chain, has been on a promotional spree, passionately endorsing various projects on Base chain and frequently commenting "based" everywhere. With the Cancun upgrade reducing transaction costs, full backing from Coinbase, and strategic collaborations with OP, Base chain has continued its rapid growth from March, now leading in TPS within the Ethereum ecosystem. A significant part of this growth undoubtedly comes from the surging traffic driven by memecoins on Base chain. Jesse has enthusiastically embraced memecoins, using them as a cornerstone of the on-chain economy, even shilling a bagful of memecoins in his presentation.

The NFT on Base has also experienced explosive growth, with Base NFTs dominating the OpenSea homepage for several days. This led many to proclaim slogans like "The NFT Renaissance is on Base."

Of course, what I'm particularly interested in are the projects on Base chain that are closely integrated with the Farcaster community, including a wide array of memecoins and NFTs launched from Farcaster on Base chain. These projects enable Farcaster to serve as the social layer for the Base chain.

Scene memecoins

Beyond $DEGEN, another significant Base chain memecoin within the Farcaster community is $TN100x developed by @deployer, also known as Ham. Its channel, /lp, has amassed an audience of 30k followers. Similar to $DEGEN's tipping, we can also see Ham's iconic 🍖 used for tipping in the comments under various casts. Mirroring $DEGEN's trajectory even more closely, Ham announced in April their upcoming launch of Ham L3, which again captured high attention. Additionally, Ham introduced Floaties, a convenient on-chain tipping tool that supports various tokens including $TN100x, $DEGEN, $HIGHER, and $MEMBER for tipping on Farcaster and in Twitter comment sections, thus helping to expand the application scenarios for more memecoins.

Since the end of last month when mfers chose to launch their memecoin, mfercoin ($mfer), on Base chain, several NFT projects have also introduced their memecoins. For example, a member of the Nouns DAO community, @dotnouns, initiated a memecoin derived from Nouns IP called Noggles ($NOGS) in April via Party.app, aimed at empowering the entire Nouns ecosystem. They also launched a tipping scheme on Farcaster.

$Higher is another notable Base chain memecoin originating from the Farcaster ecosystem, whose distinctive symbol ↑ and the artworks created around it are prevalent across Farcaster, once prompting influencers to check-in at the /higher channel. Both Zora and Highlight now support minting NFTs with $HIGHER.

I think part of its popularity stems from having an easily understandable and communicable name and symbol. James Beck believes that Higher provides an easy template for derivative creation, a collection of artworks on Zora, and an investment-attractive token that enables participation from all consumer types within the Aspirational Economy: connoisseurs, superfans, selective buyers, and skimmers.

NFTs

Onchain Gaias NFT on Base chain have maintained high popularity within the Farcaster community since their release. In April, @ciniz launched an additional NFT on Zora to elaborate on their vision as "Onchain General Artificial Intelligence Agents": a revolutionary platform aimed at making AGI development accessible to the average person. The ambition is impressive, and we can only wait to see how it develops.

There are also interactive generative art pieces called swatches created by the artist @jvmi. I found it quite fascinating to interact with the different colors and shapes on their NFT page.

jvmi 🏎️💨

@jvmi_

introducing v0 of the curator gallery page.

jvmi.art/swatches/galle…

curators can now right click + save as to generate an animated swatch pfp in both light & dark mode.

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4:44 AM • Apr 26, 2024

The Onchain coin project, renowned for its high-demand launches, rolled out the Prescription Pass and Onchain Pills NFTs in April, causing a notable server crash involving Basescan, Warpcast, and Highlight during the minting of the former. Following this, they introduced the Chain Game, a points-based game, and announced the launch of Onchain L3 via Conduit services. This new layer aims to enhance user engagement in on-chain activities through a dedicated blockchain that leverages gaming and social scoring mechanisms.

A common trait of these projects rooted in Farcaster is their ability to build and manage a community on the platform, accruing reputation, which enables them to quickly gain community support from the initial hype to the launch. This support not only catalyzes their initial success but also serves as a lasting driving force for their continued development.

Onchain games

In the realm of onchain gaming, the MMORPG on the Base chain, EthXY, has also announced plans to use the chaindrop service to build an L3 based on the Base chain. Previously launched on Farcaster, the "Luckshot Duel" and "Loot Drop" Frames garnered widespread attention within the Farcaster community. This is a prime example of effectively using the Frames feature as a promotional and interactive platform for their main game within the Farcaster community. Another popular game on Farcaster, CropXYZ, which has been hyping its seed NFTs but hasn't launched yet, also boasts its own dedicated L3 goldchain. It has announced that it will support gameplay on both web and Frame.

I've been eager to see onchain games that leverage Farcaster's social graph to create engaging onchain social gaming experiences. During the Web2 era, SNS like Facebook combined social networking with gaming to achieve rapid growth, and this synergy could be just as effective in crypto world. Farcaster has a high-quality social graph and an active community. By utilizing Farcaster’s social identity, blockchain games could quickly attract users, promote viral growth, and deepen community engagement. I look forward to more on-chain social games in the Farcaster ecosystem that can use features like Frames and Actions for better community interaction and facilitate social connections among users. Games that integrate strong social elements tend to keep users more engaged.

Zora

Zora has always been closely linked with Farcaster. For instance, many NFTs on Farcaster are minted on the Base chain or via Zora on the Zora chain. Zora supports gas-free NFT minting directly within Farcaster's Frame through its Boost feature that covers gas fees upfront. As a result, Farcaster naturally serves as the social layer for Zora dApps and the Zora chain.

Focusing on the Zora chain, in April, both the number of active addresses and transaction volumes on the Zora chain reached all-time highs. This surge can be attributed to two main factors. First, Zora announced support for minting NFTs with ERC20 tokens across various chains, providing a use case for many memecoins such as $DEGEN, $HIGHER, and $CRASH on the Base chain, along with leading Zora chain memecoins $ENJOY and $IMAGINE. Secondly, both $ENJOY and $IMAGINE launched their respective creator incentive programs, significantly boosting user engagement on the Zora chain. The habit of 'minting with a comment' has also become popular among Zora users. These factors mutually reinforced each other, driving rapid growth in the Zora chain and its prominent scene memecoins.

$ENJOY is the largest memecoin on the Zora chain. Despite its backing by SeedClub, it had a lukewarm reception at launch until early April when $ENJOY introduced its Airdrop 2 program that allowed for tipping on the Zora chain. Consequently, $ENJOY has found several practical applications as a scene memecoin:

• Share with $ENJOY: There's a plethora of memes created around its logo, featuring the blue orb and "!!!".

• Mint with $ENJOY: Zora supports minting with $ENJOY, and there's a specialized explore page for NFTs that can be minted with $ENJOY on Zora.

• Tip with $ENJOY: Tipping with $ENJOY occurs in the comment section during NFT minting, similar to how $DEGEN is used for tipping in the comments of casts. Moreover, since tips are given as weekly shares and not onchain tokens, users are more inclined to tip others. Additionally, the multimedia NFT client Surreal and the on-chain event aggregator client Interface both support easier tipping in the comments during Zora NFT minting within their apps. This functionality has helped elevate these clients from niche to well-known, creating a win-win situation within the Farcaster ecosystem.

  

  Surreal

  @surrealapp

  

  We've shipped the easiest way to leave comments, tips, and replies to Zora mints directly within the Surreal app.
  
  ✦ Add comments to Zora mints with just one tap.
  ✦ Reply to friends using @ so they'll be notified.
  ✦ Leave $ENJOY tips — we'll highlight them.
  ✦ More mints =…

  

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  3:43 PM • Apr 11, 2024

Like $ENJOY, $IMAGINE has also launched its own tipping program, allowing users to tip in the comments section when minting Zora NFTs. Today, both $ENJOY and $IMAGINE have become integral to the creator economy on the Zora chain, with an increasing number of artists choosing to release their work on Zora to earn revenue.

Overall, Farcaster has established itself as the social layer for both the Base and Zora L2s and has become an incubator for various L3s and even L4s. Theoretically, Farcaster could serve as the social layer for any blockchain, as any project on any chain can choose to set up Channels on Farcaster to build their community. The openness of Frames also supports interaction with any chain for asset issuance, though the specifics may vary. Previously, projects like Bitcoin inscriptions and Solana NFTs have launched on Farcaster. However, due to reasons like founder background, funding, and user habits, Farcaster has developed closer ties with the Base and Zora chains. Will more chains embrace Farcaster in the future?

Being an enabler of FarFi

Recently, we've seen a burgeoning number of SocialFi/CreatorFi apps built on Farcaster, such as:

• Drakula: an onchain TikTok

• Clubcast: an onchain Patreon

• AlfaFrens: an onchain OnlyFans?

• Jam: an onchain Instagram

• ...

I've been searching for the right term to describe these, and perhaps "FarFi" (Farcaster-based SocialFi ➔ Farcaster Finance) fits best. FarFi represents apps built on Farcaster's social identity, featuring their own tokenomics. Most claim to empower content creators or foster a co-creative economy between creators and customers.

FarFi consists of two crucial components: Farcaster and Finance. Both aspects distinguish it significantly from other SocialFi initiatives within the Farcaster ecosystem. The rapid popularity of Drakula, a short video app built on Farcaster, highlights the essence of FarFi: Farcaster’s open framework and composability provide the necessary social graph for applications to quickly acquire users at launch, while scene memecoins like $DEGEN act as native circulating currencies within the Farcaster ecosystem, providing the liquidity needed for these applications to get off the ground. I once said, "Farcaster + App Legos + $DEGEN economics = Onchain Social Summer", and in April, we saw a surge in FarFi apps like mushrooms after the rain.

In classifying FarFi, I've tried to organize them based on the objects they trade, which primarily are tradable profiles, casts, and channels. Moreover, the vast majority use $DEGEN, the most widely utilized scene memecoin within the Farcaster ecosystem, as their internal circulating currency.

Tradable profiles

Since the launch of friend.tech last year, the model of trading user profiles via keys based on bonding curves has become quite common, often resulting in high transaction fees typically split between the platform and the creator. This model has become the preferred method for building SocialFi apps on Farcaster, where profiles leverage Farcaster's social graph.

uncuts and farcards

Uncuts.app, launched by REKT, is a collectible card game where users can collect and trade cards representing different users and form teams. The strength of each card is determined by the user's activity level on Farcaster. Similarly, Farcards, developed by @undefined on mint.club, is also a collectible card game exclusive to Farcaster users. Users can easily mint their own cards and trade others' via the Frame, with card rankings also based on user activity on Farcaster. However, more gameplay features are yet to be unveiled.

Merely hyping up identity cards seems a bit unimaginative, and people are already experiencing aesthetic fatigue with this type of promotion. Designing a card game similar to Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering based on the diverse user cards could indeed be quite fascinating.

Clubcast

ClubCast's most notable feature is the introduction of token-gated casts. If you purchase a user's club token, you can unlock and view encrypted content sent by them on clubcast.xyz and through Farcaster's Frame.

Thus, it somewhat resembles membership-based websites like Patreon, where you can set certain content to be viewable only by subscribers. In the context of crypto social platforms, this form of token-gated posts is also present in the Lens ecosystem client, Orb, where posts can be set to be visible only to holders of a specific NFT. I believe this model should serve as an infrastructure, requiring apps that support the distribution of content exclusive to subscribers.

AlfaFrens

AlfaFrens, spearheaded by @Vijay, is a SocialFi product similar to friend.tech that offers exclusive content to subscribers. Users spend $DEGEN to subscribe to Channels created by different creators (distinct from Farcaster's Channels), gaining access to exclusive information from the creators within those Channels, while also earning $ALFA. $ALFA can be used to stake in Channels, yielding $DEGEN rewards. The more a subscriber stakes in a creator's Channel, the more $ALFA they earn.

A key difference between AlfaFrens and friend.tech is that it no longer uses the Bonding Curve-based Key model; instead, it applies a dual-token mining approach to SocialFi. Subscription fees for Channels are calculated on a time-streaming basis using SuperFluid, allowing subscribers to opt out at any time.

One of the major impacts of AlfaFrens might be that it reposes a question: Currently, most SocialFi products adopt various Bonding Curves, but is the Bonding Curve the optimal economic model for SocialFi? The rising key prices in friend.tech come from the influx of new players, not from value creation, making it unsustainable in the long run. AlfaFrens, having genuine subscribers, effectively introduces external revenue, meaning it is an extremely rare non-Ponzi, non-PVP arena model, which could lead to greater longevity. Of course, this depends on creators producing genuinely valuable content and fostering real relationships with subscribers to create a positive cycle.

Additionally, a subscription model is less prone to speculative hoarding for arbitrage than the unlimited supply key model. Subscriptions do not suffer from the price fluctuations of profiles, and also avoid ethical concerns regarding a creator's reputation, as mentioned by Joan Westenberg:

Tying a personal brand to a volatile and short-lived token/key will have lasting negative consequences. If—not when—the key inevitably fails to live up to expectations or experiences a significant decline in value, the creator's reputation will be permanently damaged.

Tradable casts

The examples above often treat "people" as tradable commodities, while also focusing on trading the content itself. For instance, Tiser supports trading individual Casts within Farcaster by using Actions to interact with Frames, effectively facilitating Cast transactions within Farcaster.

Jam is a Farcaster creator economy client, thus it initially offers functionalities to post and browse within its app. However, posts must include a picture, earning it the nickname "onchain Instagram." Additionally, it now supports trading both Casts and Profile keys. Remarkably, it achieved over $10 million in transaction volume within the first 72 hours of its launch. It's worth noting that while trading casts uses a bonding curve pricing model, there can only be one holder at a time. This effectively makes it akin to an auction of casts, which reduces speculative arbitrage to some extent, making the purchase of casts more akin to supporting the creators.

Tradable channles

Inside Warpcast, there now exists something like the Channel Pass that empowers channel hosts. Channel hosts can set a certain number of Warps as a casting threshold, reducing the release of spam within the channel. However, this is not a blockchain-based financial mechanism, so subscribers lack a way to opt out.

One upcoming development looking to integrate SocialFi elements into Channels is Degencast, developed by Liang and set to launch soon. It claims to $DEGEN-ification Channels. Exactly how it will empower Channels remains to be seen.

Of course, the possibilities for FarFi extend beyond this. Leveraging the open and composable nature of the Farcaster protocol, there could be more scenarios empowered by token economics, using media such as text, sound, or video, and potentially different vertical FarFi products could emerge. For example, the audio chat room app FarHouse has stated it will also incorporate token-gated spaces in the future.

Overall, the openness and composability of the Farcaster protocol enable these FarFi products to be rapidly developed, while the growing liquidity layer of $DEGEN in the Farcaster ecosystem gives these products the confidence to launch. However, there are concerns. Many FarFi products can lead to a dispersion of community focus and liquidity. If products require additional content creation, it can further disperse creators' energies; if they don’t involve content creation, they might just turn into pure token speculation, which is hard to sustain.

Most importantly, knowledge-based products must genuinely contain valuable knowledge, and the creator economy needs real creators producing quality content. Only then will there be real consumers willing to pay, forming a long-term, stable creator economy model.

Conclusion

In a rather detailed flow, I've revisited some of the highlights from my April experience on Farcaster that made a lasting impression, hoping to offer some insights for those interested in learning about the Farcaster ecosystem.

Moving forward, Farcaster continues to thrive as an open and composable social protocol, fostering a variety of on-chain applications, while also supporting the ecosystems of various public blockchains as a social layer. May looks promising for Farcaster, with the upcoming Farcon summit sure to spark further innovation among ecosystem builders. Despite the looming storm in the crypto market, the vibrant developer ecosystem and community culture at Farcaster make me want to remain an optimist.

Keeping optimistic, and imagining higher ↑

If I've made any errors in my description or omitted important information, please let me know. Your feedback will help improve this article. Please note that all content above is not intended as investment advice.