The Role of Farcaster
Farcaster is a Web3 social networking platform with a broader view on the creator economy, censorship-resistant content, and content creator's ecosystem.
The whole game here allows users to maintain their identity in a unified manner across platforms living within the ecosystem.
If you wanted the same to be explained like you are 4: Farcaster is the Web3 equivalent of X (aka Twitter) but with a more fun UI and monetization options.
Getting all the craziness under one roof: Long-form content, Short-form content & Video content.
The beauty of Farcaster lies in the simplicity of Social Graphs.
Imagine you have 1 Million followers on Instagram, but the moment you start a YouTube channel, it’s a reset. Nothing comes over from Instagram.
Farcaster changes that game, since everything is on-chain, and all your friends, chat, and history get populated across the ecosystem of apps.
Absolutely insane when you think about it.
Okay, so before you confuse Farcaster and Warpcast, let us briefly explain.
Farcaster = Internet or Email
Warpcast = Browser or Gmail
In Web3 terms; Farcaster = Layer-1, Warpcast = dApp
We can dive deeper into technicals, but how ‘bout we hold on to that for the next edition in our Farcaster series? Sounds good?
This is as simple as it can get.
If everything has felt super overwhelming to this point, we have the perfect Farcaster Starter Guidebook to get you up to speed with the Farcaster ecosystem:
Onboarding to Farcaster is super simple. Sign up and pay the $4.99 fee or get an invite as a gift from an existing user.
Warpcast is a mobile-only dApp and requires users to sign up by following some simple steps as seen in the image above:
Step 1: The login screen will have you create a new wallet
Step 2: Enter your email address and verify the same
Step 3: Backup your wallet seed phrase
Step 4: Boom! You are in!
Once signed up, users can verify their wallets within the app and your on-chain social interactions are a tap away.
Casting is simply like Tweeting on X, Posting on Reddit, or Publishing a status on Facebook. No rocket science and learning curves here.
Casting can be done in general without any specific niche and posted for every follower to view your content, but if you are looking at creating content for a targeted audience, then you can cast your thoughts to specific channels.
Actions are custom buttons that appear under your casts in Warpcast.
Actions are created by developers and installed by users. They can be used to add features that aren’t a core part of the Farcaster protocol. For example, you can write an action button called “remind me” that sends a reminder email 10 days after it is clicked.
Source: official warpcast notion doc
Users can install up to 5 actions at once.
At the time of writing, there are around 79 different actions available to users, The top Actions being:
$DEGEN Stats
Get the DEGEN rank and remaining allowance of the cast author
Moneygun
Automatically distribute $DEGEN tips to people who interacted with the cast
Count DEGEN tips
Count all $DEGEN tips received in the thread
Pass the potato
A game played between friends. Don't get caught holding the potato!
Free Mint
Create a free mint from any cast or images. All gas sponsored!
Farcaster allows users to create something called Frames, which lets you turn any cast into an interactive app.
You can create polls, live feeds, interactive galleries, or digital artwork that can be minted on-chain as NFTs inside Warpcast or any other FC client.
The Mints can be free or whatever amount the creator decides to price it at.
Furthermore, Frames can be more than just NFTs, creators can decide to have actionable buttons in their frames, such as linking their own website, linking their Farcaster profile, or simply letting other users check in with their activity and cast it.
Images, actionable buttons, and OG Buttons are all a part of the Frame ecosystem.
To explain stuff simply, Warps are like off-chain rewards and can be seen as a loyalty points program. Warps go an extra step ahead by just being on-chain points.
Warps allow users to pay for on-chain activity and even mint NFT directly from the Warpcast app.
Users can either purchase Warps or it may be dropped to users directly for their on-chain activity.
Purchasing Warps is super simple:
Navigate to Warps on Warpcast
Click on Buy Warps
Receive an Email link with the option to buy 500, 2500, or 10000 warps
Redirect to the payment gateway page
Pay through Metamask, Coinbase Wallet, or any other crypto wallet
Boom! You now own some Warp + get a free NFT
P.S: It is best recommended to complete payment via USDC on the Base chain
Warpcaster has previously confirmed that they do not plan on a token launch, so Warps can be seen as their perpetually existent loyalty program for on-chain degens (no pun intended) and not something that is a roadmap towards an airdrop.
Farcaster is Decentralised from the word Go! So even monetisation options are decentralised & community-driven.
Once you onboard the Farcaster train, you are 1 step closer to making your content earn some bucks (in crypto).
Tipping is done by users either through buying warps or through their daily allowance of different scene-coins like $DEGEN, Ham, etc. The tipping lasts for 30 days every month and every month is a single season.
It does not matter if you are an ETH Maxi or a Base Maxi or whichever chain Maxi you love to identify yourself as.
Warpcast has the right mix of channels that you can join and cast your thoughts associated with that channel.
Want to talk about how Ethereum will shoot past Bitcoin and maybe one day dethrone the king of crypto?
No problem, type your heart out and cast it on the Eth channel (Vitalik will be proud).
Channels are like subreddits or forums, where only the stuff that really matters to you is in focus.
Channel updates show up very similar to Instagram stories with a ring of light around their PFP.
For example, if you follow the channel Zora, instead of searching for hashtags or keywords to get the appropriate content related to Zora, users can simply see all the activity on the Zora channel.
One click less to make life simpler in a decentralized social world.
Farcaster is a super novel approach to taking the creator economy to a whole new level. We have seen plenty of decentralized social media platforms try, but fail in their journey.
The Farcaster ecosystem feels very different and their approach is community first, like jet fuel to the rocket ship.
Time to start casting, far and further! 😉
Aditak
