Hai frenpai! 👋😺 I decided to write this guide after being asked quite a lot of questions from different people about the Warpcast Power Badge. So here's everything I know, what I've learned works, and most importantly what you should avoid doing.
I've promised to release this weeks ago, and I apologize for the delay. Without further ado, let's dive into it!
Questions/comments? Post them into this thread: arfonzo 💀 on Paragraph / Warpcast
If you find this guide helpful, don't forget to Subscribe and follow me on Farcaster! 🙏😸
In a nutshell, from the documentation:
Warpcast gives power badges to users who are active, interesting to others and not spammy.
If you've used Farcaster, you've likely tried the Warpcast client. The client has a few non-standard out-of-protocol features, such as the Power Badge (PB). These are shown as a smol purple lightning bolt icon by a user's name.
It does a lot of things:
It gives you that little icon beside your name, so everyone knows you're a Power Badge holder. They're also referred to as power users.
Your casts and replies show higher up on feeds: your content has more visibility.
It ranks you higher in search results.
You are more likely to be recommended to others to follow.
Your casts are often whitelisted in many channels, and put into the Main feed.
Generally it means that you have more reach and more visibility, when you hold the Power Badge. This is why the Power Badge is a highly coveted symbol on Farcaster. Warpcast is the most popular client currently, by a wide margin. That means that Power Badge holders (referred to as power users) are at an advantage as their content gets more visibility than standard users.
You'll learn a lot by reading the official documentation for the Power Badge. I highly recommend that you go through the docs carefully to understand everything about them.
It's important to note that the Power Badge is not an official protocol-level feature, and is solely implemented on Warpcast. Some other apps and clients may decide use it, but many clients do not support it and some do not agree with it (either philosophically, or algorithmically).
Warpcast checks users on a weekly basis: on Tuesdays. If your scores according to their secret algorithms are high enough, you'll get the power badge that week. They deliberately do not document the particulars of their scoring methodology, to avoid people gaming the system to abuse Power Badges. Whether or not you disagree with that approach, that's the way it works.
Note this can work against Power Badge holders: if your score drops below the threshold, you can lose your Power Badge!
So every Tuesday, new Power Badges are given, and some current holders lose theirs. It's the circle of life. Discussing the rights/wrongs of this approach is beyond the scope of this article, so I'll avoid giving my opinion about it--this is simply how it works.
So... here's where it gets tricky.
The majority of readers have come to this article asking exactly this. As the "secret sauce" is... well, secret, there are no clear guidelines on exactly what you need to do and what thresholds must be met. It can make it difficult for users to understand what they can do. Others have criticised the system for promoting a two-class ecosystem, going as far as to call it a caste system. Again, I'm not here to judge (at least not in this article): I'm simply here to share what I know.
If you're a Farcaster user, you are likely interested in attaining the Power Badge, to ensure you maximise your reach on the network. Unfortunately, I have no get-rich-quick schemes for you. Everything I'm going to discuss requires consistent effort and patience. If that's not for you, then you should probably stop reading here. I'm not going to hand you some scammy grifter playbook to get it in 3 days.
I would recommend you take a minute to read a short 3-cast thread I wrote a while ago, on attaining Power Badges, here:
Read it? Okay, great. Bear in mind that due to the limited length of casts, the thread was fairly high level and does not delve deeply into the details. That's why I decided to follow up with this article.
Let's begin with strategies that work, and then we'll go into things that I feel don't work.
Take a careful read of the following, which is straight from their documentation:
At a general level, it's all laid out right there. Let's break it down:
Be consistent. Don't drop a cast once a week/month and wonder why nothing's happening.
Like all good things, honing a skill takes patience, repetition and consistency. Set aside time every day to do it, if needs be. It needn't be a lot, but it needs to be consistent.
Conversely, some people think they need to sit at the desk the whole day posting. I will go into that below, but personally I don't feel this is time well spent, or will result in getting a Power Badge. I'd much rather spend far less time in a focused manner, conversing with a few legitimate and friendly people.
QUALITY over QUANTITY, at all times.
Encouraging Power Badge holders to engage with your content is extremely important, as the algorithm does weigh this heavily into your score. So try to get power users to interact with you. You can do this in various ways:
Liking, Recasting and leaving comments on their casts. Don't spam them: be thoughtful and meaningful. They are far more likely to respond to a well-thought out response, than some one word generic reply.
Don't tag them and beg them for tips/follows. It's shameful and it's going to work against you.
Target channels that interest you, and post engaging content/questions/discussion points. We all love good conversation, and power users will respond to any casts that interest them.
So should you only focus on power users, ignoring the rest? I wouldn't recommend it, and I've never done that myself. Every legitimate user is an individual, who deserves respect and engagement with interesting conversation.
Besides, a regular user today could be a power user tomorrow.
If you followed them when they were a regular user and became friends, they are more likely to engage with you when they become a power user. Never forget this. Never be salty that someone got the badge and you didn't--if you follow each other, you're all the more likely to get the badge, now that they've got it! Keep interacting with them, and let them help you!
We'll go into spam in detail in the follow section. However as a general rule, you need to avoid being flagged as a spam account. If flagged, this is the end of your account's progress. It could take far more work to undo the spammer flag, than it takes to get reported as a spammer: always remember this.
You can be flagged in two general ways:
By the algorithm/scoring process, and
By user reports.
Firstly, the algorithm has its own methods for determining whether your profile is spammy, in the documentation they describe a mix of automated and manual mechanisms that work together to identify and curtail spammers and other malicious actors. So the algorithm may automatically determine that your actions have been spammy, or they may manually review content to determine it spam.
Secondly, reports from power users (and regular users to a lesser degree) matter. Spamming can take many forms, and power users are individuals: ergo, they may react differently to your casts. What's fine for one, may be spam for another. So it makes sense to pay attention to channel norms (the rules laid out in every channel), and avoid overstepping the boundaries. Generally speaking most users are understanding; however you do the same thing multiple times and they might not be so forgiving.
You may notice a lot of people posting contests, shilling certain things, or doing the "pew-pew cannon" or "gun" thing. Again, what's welcome in one channel may be flagged as spam in another.
Personally, I avoid all of these things. I don't cast this type of content. But that's just my preference and character.
Whatever you do, be mindful where you're doing it. Know your audience, and know what's acceptable and what's not. You will avoid a world of pain, simply by being courteous and not overdoing it. I know in many places (like X/Twatter) low effort shills, repeated spams, that kind of garbage content is acceptable and normalized. However, Farcaster isn't like that.
The moment enough power users report your account, your visibility will be dunked and severely limited. I can't reiterate this enough. It is far harder to undo this damage, than to get flagged as a spammer.
Starting June, a new scoring system was introduced which radically changes the way the algorithm scores users. It focuses very much on quality over quantity. Sound familiar?
The quality metrics depend on the type of actions:
Mentions | 12 points |
Answers | 6 points |
Recasts | 3 points |
Likes | 1 point |
New Followers | 1 point |
Given this, you can easily see that by mentioning accounts, you have the equivalent of 12 new followers. A mention is when you tag their username. For example tagging "@arfonzo" in your cast would mention me.
"Great! I'll just start mentioning all my friends and they will mention me back!" you must be thinking (and every other spammer and botnet on Farcaster). We've seen this type of rigging behaviour break out in the past days already, as bad actors are already trying to game the system.
I definitely would not recommend doing this, as I am fairly sure they will be monitoring for such behaviour and you will end up penalised for it, rather than gaining 12 points per mention. They've always taken similar stances on their rules, so I do not expect things to be different with the new system.
By all means, do mention users, but only during the course of normal conversation. Don't start doing it in every cast. Certainly don't do a "F4F" type system where you "mention 4 mention". These types of low-quality spammy interactions are easy to pick up by automated algorithms.
We've now gone through their rulebook and ways to tick their mystery boxes to keep the algorithm happy. But what are some myths and things you should avoid doing?
You'll probably be surprised that I'm about to suggest you avoid doing things that you see 90% of other accounts doing.
They are acting on myths, under the assumption that certain types of actions will result in higher scores, more engagement, or otherwise. Let's go through a few of the more common myths and activity types I've seen on Farcaster, and why I believe you shouldn't engage in them. I would reiterate again, that this is my personal opinion and their algorithms are not fully documented publicly.
Untrue, as I stated in the thread above, I got mine at just over 100 followers. I've heard people mention the magical 400 number. This is false: this was the older Active Badge, which has since been deprecated.
Trust me, you don't need many followers.
As an extension of the above: needless to say, do not do things like "follow-for-follow" (also called F4F or follow backs). Spamming stuff like 100% follow backs, will only work against you. Don't just take my word for it--read what the devs have stated:
Instead of trying to accumulate masses of Followers, target specific users, such as power users with shared interests. Engage with them, encourage them to follow you through interesting casts & replies to their content.
Do not embarrass yourself with low-quality begging like "pls follow me bro", 99% of the time that will fail and it's annoying to see.
Untrue, it can actually work against you. If you have thousands of casts with none or very few interactions, this actively reduces your engagement metric score. Do not think you need to spend all day making low effort and low value casts or content.
Quality over quantity, is the rule to follow.
Be consistent, do it daily, and always focus on adding value. Whether you're answering questions, or asking questions, or promoting interesting topics and discussions, or just adding humour: whatever you do, ask yourself whether it's adding value, or simply just forcing more casts out.
Don't fall into the trap of mass-produced low quality content: mass recasts, mass quotes, mass replies, mass contests, et cetera. The general word to describe all of these actions is spammy. I know some of you won't like to hear it, but objectively that's how it's seen.
Untrue. Previously (before June), what counted the most were new casts, not replies. Remember that from June onwards, the scoring system is different, weighing various interactions based on quality, not quantity. Sound familiar? I keep repeating it, because it's critical you get this distinction.
Having said that, replying is a fantastic way to meet people, build your own goodwill, and by extension of those encourage users to follow your account.
Replying is definitely a core part of what I do every day on Farcaster, but it is by no means the single route to attaining a Power Badge. On the contrary, I believe that if all you do is replyguy/replygal, you won't get the Power Badge easily.
Replying is a powerful tool to engage others on their casts. But only if you are thoughtful and meaningful. Otherwise you're just spamming the poor authors and likely to be ignored at best, and muted/reported at worst.
Do not fall into the trap of mass replies with zero value add. Why would anyone want to engage with that? It's just spam. Again, truth hurts. But it's meant to improve your strategy.
Ask yourself when replying whether you're adding value or just creating noise.
Untrue. I never did a single thing like this. Not a single one. I feel too much of this can work against you as your account may be flagged as spammy.
But wait arfy, I see big accounts doing tons of contests, giveaways, pew pew cannons?
Well, this is true. But are you a big account? Do you have enough interactions outside of these spammy actions to offset the negative impact they have? These big accounts can get away with it, because they have enough "good" content and interactions to balance the negative scoring these spammy actions might give them.
Bear in mind that larger accounts have far more interactions and history, to offset their bad/spammy actions than you. So they can afford to do this content. But you don't have the same luxury; where a large account can get away with doing this 10 times a day, you could get flagged up for doing this once a day.
That is why I never recommend users to do these. Please note this is very much my personal opinion, and plenty of legitimate and larger accounts disagree with me here.
If you are here for the contests, airdrops, et cetera--that's fine. Just realise that it will work against you when trying to gain the Power Badge. Most users I know are uninterested in following users where their profile feed is littered with such content and little "true" content.
Abso-fucking-lutely not. 100% do not do this. It's transparent, obvious, and really yucky for others to see. I feel awkward whenever I get these types of comments and tags (it happens a lot, every single day).
If I click on your profile and all I see are giveaways, contests, shills, and begging for tips... do you think I'm likely to follow you or engage? Judge your own actions objectively: how would another user feel looking at your feed?
If this looks like your feed, please have a hard think about how you want to be seen and encourage engagement: 🙈
"nice one bro"
"F4F"
"tips for me my bro?"
"shoot me"
"pls follow me bro"
"giveaway my bros"
"T4T"
"not paid yet"
"woooow!"
"pls follow me bro"
"I always support you pls support me"
"pls send tips bro"
I apologise if this is harsh, but look--it's better you read this from me, than you wonder for months why your strategy is not leading you anywhere. It will leave you frustrated. Please do not do it, even if you see tons of other people doing it.
Interesting case study: I've recently had valuable discussions with various Korean users who feel that the majority in their region are grifting simply because that's all they see other Koreans do. It's sad to see, and through no fault of their own, their accounts end up being brutalized on the scoring system.
As a regular user on Farcaster, I can tell you that I am not interested in grifts. I am not looking for content like this to engage with. I'm looking for thoughtful comments, things that make me laugh, hard questions, sharing progress, learning about who you are... basically anything except for this grifty bullshit.
As the rules were never laid out, I couldn't tell you exactly. However, I can give you some details about my progress on Farcaster:
I made my account back in October 2023.
I didn't post much back then. A little gardening and plant-related content, answering questions, that was about it.
As DAU increased in 2024, I decided to give it another go, and put in a bit more effort.
I decided to check in consistently, daily, and try to add value wherever I could. This was mostly around gardening and cats, two of my favourite subjects.
So every day, I scoured the /gardening channel for fresh content, questions, and interesting casts: I replied, I encouraged people, and most of all I tried to share my experience and knowledge to answer any gardening questions I could.
When I got a tip allowance, I started tipping any content I wanted to encourage more of. Be the change that you want to see.
I got my power badge I think in March or April 2024, with around 125 Followers. It was unexpected, and not something I was deliberately trying to do.
I turned off Priority mode, because I don't believe in hiding away anyone's comments. I want to see them all. This is a personal preference, of course.
I spoke about consistency, and I'd be a real schmuck if I didn't follow my own advice. Every day, I have some daily actions:
I try to cast at least a few times a day. Always something meaningful. Never anything low effort or spammy.
I check into my "core channels", and read everything in the Recent feed.
I reply when I have something meaningful to add.
I follow general strategies which I've formed over my months here on Farcaster. I recommend you start making your own strategy. It needn't be a formal document or anything unwieldy. But do have a strategy which helps you to decide what to cast, when to reply, how to engage, et cetera.
I'll share my own strategy below:
Here's what I found works well for me. Everyone hones their own individual strategy, it's a craft and a skill, like anything in life. The more you do something, the better you get at it. The more you refine it, the easier it gets.
I don't have some document where I lay all this strategy out--that's for nerds. Having been here for long enough, most of this is just second nature to me, as it will be to you over time.
Don't waste time trying to be someone else. You'd be surprised how many comments I've received from users that felt they needed to be someone else to make it. You don't.
The most low-effort approach is the honest one: just be yourself. Don't look at some big account and mimic them. Don't look at what everyone else is doing and mimic them.
Why? Isn't it obvious? It's easy to be yourself, it's hard to be someone else. I want to learn more about people, I want to meet new people, and discuss things with real peeps. Not fake-as-fuck cookie cutter memelords, or shillers, or moonbois/moongals.
When you pretend, you end up looking like a very shallow personality, and I can guarantee you that it results in far less engagement.
As an extension of Tip #1, be interesting.
Show the world why you're an interesting person. Everyone is interesting, it's just that not everyone shares this to the world. Don't be that one-dimensional bullshit account: make the account reflect your real life personality. Share the parts of your life and character you are comfortable to share.
Similarly, don't be that low-effort account that only recasts. Or quotes saying only "based!" or "amazing!". Why is something based? What made it amazing, that you wanted to share it? Call out what's interesting.
Don't fill your feed with uninteresting junk. Put yourself in another's shoes: is your profile filled with contests and cannons/moneyguns? Is it just a bunch of recasts with no value added at all to the network?
Social networks are awash with all kinds of users and vibes--from positive to hateful, optimistic to pessimistic, kind to harsh.
I always go with kindness. Especially on Farcaster. If you want negativity, I think you'd be better suited to post on X/Twitter, where that seems to harness more interactions.
Personally I have found always being kind, thankful and grateful to be a massive help not only to my own mental health, but also to others. I want to be there to support, cheer on, and lead by example. I do not want to be that asshole jeering at people's misfortunes.
If you have a tipping allowance, be sure to tip out each day as much as you can. The recent changes to the algorithm mean that you will get more allowance, if you regularly tip more than five times a week.
Every day, I strive to hit /degenzero, a term which means all tips are given out.
I tip out based on the content I want to see more of--be the change you want to see.
There's no secret formula: tip what feels right and natural to you. Sometimes I'll tip more, sometimes less. I do try to spread out as many meaningful tips as I can, rather than one big tip daily.
Have patience and stick to regular posting. Be consistently genuine, post daily, and you will quickly see your interactions grow.
People will come to expect to see your casts on a regular basis, and it will become natural and easy for them to interact and engage with you. Why? Because if you've followed all my suggestions above, interacting with you will be friendly, leave them feeling good, and valued.
We congregate around consistently positive people, not jerks. It's the same in Farcaster as in life.
Spread out onto different channels, don't pigeon-hole yourself into one space and never look outside.
There's plenty of people on Farcaster, with as diverse interests as you have. Make sure to experiment with casting into different channels every day.
Follow peeps who inspire you, make you laugh, engage with you, or for any other reason. Don't be stingy with the follows! Network with people, and grow your following and follower count.
After all, you never know who the next person might be that could help you out in life. Or gain the Power Badge, or just give you good advice.
I've had lots of interesting discussions with artists (visual, audio, others) in the past months about this, so I've added this mini-section, just for you! Please bear in mind this is all my own opinion, and it may diverge from what others suggest.
Generally speaking, artists are highly frustrated that their constant casting is bearing little fruit at best, and flagging them as spammers at worst.
Bear in mind that AI and algorithms make no distinction between a meme image, and a fantastic piece of artwork.
I know it sucks, but that's life--so do not rely on rich content (visuals, audio) to up your score. This sounds extremely counterintuitive, but hear me out. My suggestion to artists is to take advantage of the longer text limit now introduced on Farcaster, to add extended descriptions/context to their artwork!
As an example, I don't suggest you do posts like this:
#339: The Cat Sleeps. Oil on canvas.
[image]
It would be more beneficial to add further text, for example:
Describe the process you took to make the piece.
Add context around why it's meaningful, what it symbolizes, what it means to you, et cetera.
Add interesting information around the piece: perhaps it was showcased somewhere? Was it the first time you worked on this medium? Did you make 3 attempts before this?
As you can see, by adding further context you provide more interesting details for the readers, and hopefully you will also avoid algorithms flagging your posts in weird ways. People who are interested in your artwork will always want to know more anyways, so I think it's highly worthwhile to take an extra minute to add some extended context.
Please check these other documents and articles to increase your understanding of Power Badges. They also offer insight from other power users about strategies and tips you can incorporate into your daily casting routine.
Official documentation on Power Badges, here.
Ryya has a trilogy of articles on the Power Badge that I strongly recommend you read:
Join the channel /powermonday, where you can get help with gaining your power badge by posting interesting and genuine content, ask questions, and access support from a wide range of power users who are happy to help legitimate accounts out.
Gaining power user status is no easy task. Only a very small percentage of users ever attain this, and it's not going to last forever. In fact, next week, I may not be a power user anymore. That's life.
However, I hope that this article has helped you understand some do's and don'ts and set you well on your way to attaining the Power Badge! If you have any questions feel free to hit me up, anytime on Farcaster.
Questions/comments? Post them into this thread: arfonzo 💀 on Paragraph / Warpcast
Thank you for reading, and I'll see you out there, casting! 😻
If you find this guide helpful, don't forget to Subscribe and follow me on Farcaster! 🙏😸
arfonzo
arfonzo's Comprehensive Guide to Getting Your Power Badge I've just published my long overdue guide on attaining power user status! It's my longest @paragraph article to date. Apologies for the delay, and I hope it helps! 😼⚡ Feel free to drop comments here if you have questions. 🙏
h/t to @ryya for their trilogy of PB articles, which I have linked as MANDATORY READING at the bottom of my guide. I began writing this guide as Ryya was releasing the 3 articles, and I 100% agree with everything in those fantastic posts! Deffo recommend anyone to read, particularly the first two.
bookmarked i'll give this a full read. apparently i need it, arf ;) 250 $degen
Tysm ser! 🙏💜 In your case I actually think you don't need this. You're doing everything right and was simply a victim of the "need" to reduce numbers.
It was great to see that you put so much time into this. First of all, I would like to thank frenpai for putting this together.🙏 I have one question. Currently, there are two rating systems, Airstack and OPENRANK, and I believe Airstack was used as the PB standard in the past. OPENRANK is a new standard, and to what extent do you think it affects PB acquisition?
Thank you very much for the kind words, @eiteengo! 🙏 Excellent question: AFAIK Airstack now uses the new openrank algos. I wrote instructions on checking openrank yourself a month ago, check here on how to do it: https://warpcast.com/arfonzo/0xd7fbe2fa
I'm a little confused here. My understanding was that the following two were ranked according to their respective evaluation criteria. (1) OPRNRANK (2) Airstackrank It was also my understanding that since June, Degen has adopted (1) and utilized it in setting Tip allowance. With regard to PB, I assumed that either (1) or (2) or both (1) and (2) were employed, etc. In your view, though, (2) means that (1) was adopted, I had never heard that information before and had never heard or talked about it from anyone in Japan. The image is an example of my ranking of (1) and (2), which may be about 10,000 places apart for some people.
Thank you frenpai. I will read carefully and work hard. If there's anything I don't understand, I will ask, so please teach me. ありがとうfrenpai よく読んで精進します 解らないことがあったら訊きますので教えて下さいね
You're welcome, and yes please ask if you have questions. I'll try my best to answer everyone!
Thank you, frenpai. Salute to your dedication to everyone 🫡 ありがとうfrenpai あなたのみんなへの献身に敬礼 🫡
This is so great! 😁 The article is to the point and very easy to understand! It's not much, but it's all I have.🤣 5 $DEGEN 🍖x474
Thanks so much for the kind words @saxophone55.eth! 🙏😻 I really appreciate your generosity, I don't write these expecting tips, but I truly appreciate it! I hope that it can help you on your journey. You're a great user and exactly the type that should be considered "power badge" material! 💪
I don't think I can get a badge! Haha,
What makes you say that?! You. Can. Get. It. If. You. Want. It!
I think my account is spam!🥲
25 $degen for using the word schmuck. That was a really good read and pretty much exactly what we talked about. thanks @arfonzo (getting my 12 pts) 😆
Thank mew for the tips and mention, hahaha! 🙏 Aaah, lol! I forgot I used schmuck in there, it's true! 😹 I'm glad you found it useful, and yes, it covers much of what I discussed with you & others. I found myself repeating a lot, so I thought why not pull it all together into one place for peeps?
Thank you so much for putting this together! I read through it all, and it seems like you're a real cat person. 😻 🙏
You're so welcome Silky! Hope you found it useful. And yes--I am definitely a cat person, as u can tell from my pfp! 😹
That's really helpful, thanks again! I'm a big cat person too, actually have one at home. 😻
As always, you write brilliantly. The cast you shared with me last time was a very valuable condensation of all the important elements. Each one is excellent, but this one is more specific and detailed on what to do, and feels like a must-read for those of us who don't know PB or WC!
Thank you so much tomo, I really appreciate that. 🙏🐱 I hope that it provides some help to everyone out there wondering what they could do, or what they should AVOID doing!
thank you very much Recently, the Japanese community has been experiencing a lack of new influx But when newcomers do come, this text of yours will be of great help to them! I will bookmark it and pass it on to those who need it!
Just read it’s excellent Will be recommending this when onboarding new users! 🍖 x 169
Thanks so much for the kind words Papa Bear! 🙏 I'm glad you found it useful, and I hope it can help new users too! To be honest, I don't think new users should immediately aim to get the PB--just aim to have a good time by being genuine and the rest will fall into place!
Absolutely and I think that sentiment is well expressed in your article, one of the many reasons it is so excellent 👊🏼