After Farcaster started supporting Monad testnet in their in-app wallet, many community members began embracing Farcaster. To my surprise, some of the things I thought were obvious were actually not, so I decided to write a small guide to help others make the best use of Farcaster. I hope it can be useful to anyone willing to give Farcaster a try!

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• Cast

On Farcaster, you don't message, or tweet. You cast. That's the default language on the platform. You create a cast, share a cast, or direct cast (DC) your friends.

• Channels

Channels are an interesting primitive within Farcaster. Think of them as points of interest, or tribes. When you arrive on a new social platform, it's often difficult to find like-minded people with similar interests or focuses. Channels help you find your tribe. Let's take the "Sneakers" channel, for example. You can find pics about people's favorite sneakers, information about upcoming releases, discussions about people's favorite sneaker brands…

Depending on the channel, it can be open, or gated. Open means anyone can cast in the channel; gated means you need access to cast in the channel. (However, even when gated, it's important to note that you can still reply to casts). It can be an invite from one of the moderator (don't hesitate to DC them to request access!) or a special NFT that marks the commitment to that channel (see the "Memes" channel , for example).

Channels are semi-siloed: when you create a cast, you have 2 choices. You can either decide to cast outside of a channel, in the regular feed, or to cast in a specific channel. Casting in a channel doesn't mean it won't show up in your followers feed who are not member of the same channel, though. It'll just give extra information to the algorithm for display and suggestions. Your followers will still see your cast, even if you cast it in a channel they don't follow.

Channels are not part of the protocol, however (they're not decentralized yet). They're a primitive that lives within the Farcaster client ecosystem, so if you create one, be mindful of that aspect: ownership of the channel could be theoretically taken away from you. The goal for the Merkle Manufactory team (behind the Farcaster protocol/client) is to eventually decentralize the channels, but it hasn't been done yet.

• Clients

Farcaster, at its core, is a decentralized protocol used to store its users’ information (profiles, casts, shared images etc...). Users don't interact directly with the protocol, though; they interact with clients: clients are applications that use the data distributed by the protocol, and organize it in any way they see fit. Different clients organize data differently, depending on the user experience they intend to provide. The Merkle Manufactory team also developed a client, formerly known as Warpcast (more info below) and now rebranded to Farcaster. It happens to be the most used one, but there are alternative clients like Tunecaster, a client focused on Music experience and developed by Ghostlinkz, Far.quest another alternative client developed by Nico.vibe, or Herocast, an open source alternative client developed by Hellno. That's the reason why we talk about "censorship-resistant social platform" for Farcaster: clients can always decide to censor some kind of information, but anyone is free to build a client that will not censor information, and gather users who care about absolute freedom of speech for example. Content can be censored at the client level, but it cannot be censored at the protocol level.

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• Degen

Degen is a memecoin that triggered Farcaster's first viral moment. In early 2024, Jacek created Degen, and came up with a novel distribution scheme that took the crypto space by storm: every day, users would be allocated an amount of $DEGEN tokens, but the only thing they could do with it was to tip them to other users. It created a whole new behavior on the platform where users started using crypto selflessly, as there was no way for them to benefit directly from this allocation. It brought a lot of new users to the platform and helped put Farcaster on the map.

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• Farcaster

Farcaster is a decentralized, permissionless, onchain social network. At its core, it's a protocol that different clients use to offer a tailored social experience, but it's now also the name of the first client.

• FID

FID stands for "Farcaster ID". That's the immutable ID number that’s assigned when you create an account on the Farcaster protocol. The smaller the FID, the earlier an account was created on Farcaster. It's often used by members to boast about how early they were in the ecosystem.

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• Miniapps

The first user boom on Farcaster was a combination of 2 things: Degen blowing up, and the birth of "Frames". Frames are effectively applications that can be embedded into a cast. It allowed casts to become interactive, turning users into active participants. However, the first version of Frames was limited. Ultimately, you still needed to click on a link to exit the app and perform one final action, related to a wallet connection or a payment.

Then came Frames v2, and everything changed. Starting with the name: “Frames v2” became “Miniapps”, and thanks to the implementation of an in-app wallet (see more below), users could now perform everything while staying on Farcaster. Miniapps could remain open in the background, so you could keep browsing Farcaster while having Acid Test playing in the background for example.

To make a very 2000s analogy, think when apps were released on Facebook, except this time, Facebook can't kill them like it did with Zynga, because the protocol is decentralized. If one of the clients decided to kill them a la Facebook, another client could decide to maintain that same user experience, and let the users decide what they prefer. Democracy! :)

And so just like with Zynga, it's very likely that we'll see champions and unicorns emerge as miniapps on Farcaster, doing user acquisition on behalf of Farcaster in a symbiotic win/win relationship. If you want to engage yourself and develop a presence on Farcaster, I highly suggest you take a look at miniapps to do so!

• Monad

Monad is at the same time the first testnet, AND the first alternative chain (outside of ETH L1 and its L2s) to be supported in Farcaster's in-app wallet. This enables users to send and receive testnet $MON through their Farcaster wallet, but also enables builders to make miniapps that run on Monad testnet. Contact Harpal on Farcaster if you want to build a miniapp running on the Monad testnet and need some guidance!

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• Notifications

There are multiple forms of notifications on Farcaster, but there are four you should keep an eye on, in my opinion:

1. Regular notifications. This is the most frequent type and will show up in the notification section.

2. Channel notifications. In the regular notification section, there's a "channels" tab. Channels owners can blast message the channel followers, and those notifications will end up in that tab. Check them out for fresh information about the channels you follow.

3. Miniapps notifications. If you've installed a miniapp, you will receive notifications about updates from these miniapps in the "notification" section.

4. Requests. In the direct cast section, there's a "requests" sub-section: this is where direct casts from people you don’t follow will end up. Make sure to check them every once in a while to not miss important messages!

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• Pro

The Farcaster team just launched their first “pro” subscription. For $120/year, you can turn your account into a “pro” account and enjoy the following benefits:

1. 10k characters cast

2. Possibility to add up to 4 images per cast

3. Ability to gift pro-subscription to other users

4. Other upcoming and yet-to-be announced benefits

Upon the launch of the pro-subscription, an NFT was created and sent to the first 10,000 subscribers. However, it doesn't act as a membership NFT; it’s just memorabilia. You can still subscribe to pro beyond the first 10,000 members. It’s important to note that 100% of revenue will go to creator and developer rewards.

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• Rewards

The Farcaster team has implemented two kinds of rewards that keep the Farcaster experience high-quality:

1. Casters rewards. Those rewards go out every week, and are distributed to the casters generating the highest organic engagement. It’s therefore similar to the way X shares some of its revenue with the top Twitter accounts, except it's better distributed and more granular here. Rewards are distributed to the in-app wallets in USDC.

2. Builders reward. If you build miniapps for the Farcaster ecosystem and they gain traction, you'll be eligible for the builders reward, also paid directly to your wallet, in USDC.

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• Starter packs

Starter packs are incredibly useful if you have just landed on Farcaster. Similarly to channels, they help you "find your tribe". For example, if you come to Farcaster from the Monad community, there's a Monad Starter Pack that lets you follow every member from the Monad Foundation and Monad builders who are active on Farcaster. If you're more of a Geopolitics-focused user, there's a list of people who cast regularly about Geopolitics on Farcaster. Don't hesitate to spend time exploring the different starter packs, there's a lot of value in there. Feel free to create one yourself as well if you feel like it!

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• Wallet

Earlier this year, Farcaster launched their first in-app wallet. It's a crucial piece that was missing from the ecosystem. Now that it's implemented, builders are able to deliver in-app experiences that deliver direct economical value to users. For example, miniapps like Paperview, Amps or Noice, directly rely on the existence of this wallet to deliver a seamless user experience and provide a sustainable source of revenue to their users.

• Warpcast

Warpcast is the former name of the first Farcaster client. It has since been simply rebranded to "Farcaster", to keep branding consistent. Farcaster is comprised of the client, and the protocol, so it's always good to specify which one you're talking about when talking about "Farcaster".

• Warps

Warps were an attempt by the Merkle Manufactory to have an in-app currency. It's always been experimental. At some point it was used to reward channel owners for their moderators activity. However, when the in-app wallet was implemented, Warps were converted to USDC, so it's likely that moving forward, Warps will be deprecated. Right now, as far as I know it's only used to create a Channel (costs 2,500 Warps) or purchase invites (500 Warps).

I hope this short glossary will be useful and helps you get the maximum value out of your first steps on Farcaster!