# The power of Reply. *Why is your reply power so strong? How to raise your degen allowance? What should a beginner do in Farcaster?* By [Eddon](https://paragraph.com/@eddon) · 2024-06-09 degen, farcaster --- Welcome to my article, I am Edd! I hope you enjoy this little trip, let's get started! * * * In this article, you will learn: -------------------------------- * **How should a beginner act in Farcaster?** * **How does replying affect your degen allowance and account growth?** * **How to make your reply stand out among many others?** * **When can I cast?** * **How to find the most important people to reply to? (there's a little surprise here!)** * **Why will you love replying?** * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/3f290c51efbdccb6491c08609cf83876.png) How Should a Beginner Act in Farcaster? --------------------------------------- As the number of users in Farcaster grows, many beginners have a lot of questions about casting, profile growth, and degen allowance. Everyone tries different methods, learns through trial and error, but sometimes this leads to wasted time or lost interest in the app. I think it's worth starting with my story and my journey in this app. I started casting with 30 followers initially, these were follow-for-follow channels. But after gaining the first 30 followers, I realized I was doing something wrong. It was getting harder to gain followers, and the ones I had weren't very active. The next thing I found was the /paidgroup channel, and with it, my audience quickly grew, my degen rank started to rise rapidly. But I was bothered that any cast outside this channel got no engagement at all. Also Including the latest updates, you can't grow this way anymore. The main conclusion is that **none of the above methods work**. After a short time, I came to the realization that **replying was the key**! * * * How Does Replying Affect Your Degen Allowance and Account Growth? ----------------------------------------------------------------- ![](https://paragraph.xyz/editor/callout/information-icon.png) If you are a complete beginner and still figuring out the degen system, you should visit [degen.tips](http://degen.tips). I think many haven't yet understood the new allowance calculation system, so I consider it important to briefly explain it. Since the start of Airdrop 2 Season 5, degen uses a new system based on openrank. The higher your rank in this system, the higher your allowance. The openrank system is both complex and simple. Without diving into technical details, interacting with bots (like in /paidgroup) won't benefit you. But interacting with large accounts will give you a huge boost. **Why is that?** The openrank rating depends on the interaction of the 73 most popular people (at the time of the snapshot) and their interactions with others. With each interaction, they share points with the user, and this happens among all, so bots get very little, if any, of this rating. To grow your allowance, you need interactions with the highest-rated people or as close to them as possible to people. Also your interactions with large users and users with PB, will affect the PB you get. ### Account growth depends on your cast/reply interactions: ![](https://paragraph.xyz/editor/callout/tip-icon.png) * Likes = 1 * Replies = 6 * Recasts = 3 * Mentions = 12 * Follows = 1 Understanding our goal, we come to another question: how do we achieve results? **I think we should consider two options:** **Replying** - All we need to do is reply to large accounts' posts and aim for their response or other interaction with your reply. **Casting** - You need to make posts and try to get noticed. Without followers and a badge, this is very difficult. **Reasons include:** 1. You can't be in "trends" tab without a Power Badge. 2. It's unlikely to appear in someone's news feed unless they follow you. 3. You might get to a channel's main page, but without consistent interaction, you won't stay there long. Considering both options, **replying** is the simplest and quickest for us. * * * How to Make Your Reply Stand Out Among Many Others? --------------------------------------------------- There are many options, but not all will work for a particular person. There are many factors to consider, as everyone has their own triggers and interests. So, you should observe people closely. ### **Based on my experience, here’s what to consider when writing a reply:** * Reply immediately. (The earlier you reply to a cast, the more likely you'll be noticed.) * Consider the character and background of the person you're replying to. * Write constructively. * Write relatively long replies (they take up more screen space and stand out, as most replies are short). * Asking questions? It depends on the person, but many will gladly answer your question, allowing you to continue the dialogue. * Respond to replies; the longer your dialogue, the better people remember you. * Add emojis to your text to make it stand out more (rarely, you can use images if appropriate). * **Stay yourself.** ### What not to do: * Write short, empty replies. For example, if you reply with just "GM" to a "GM" post, who would want to react? There might be 30 other similar "GMs" under the replies. * Write by template. Even I've encountered such people. If you keep writing the same way, people will think you're a bot. * Use only emojis in replies; who would respond to that? * Reply to old posts. If you don’t have a power badge, or the person you're replying to isn’t following you, your reply will likely go unnoticed. These are the main things to understand when writing a reply. If you want to excel even more, books on psychology might help.😅 * * * Addition. When Can I Cast? -------------------------- You can start casting with zero followers, but it won't be very effective. Therefore, until you have 500-1000 followers and a power badge, you shouldn't focus too much on casting In my subjective opinion, the best time to start casting is with 200-300 followers. You won’t get many reactions, but this will help you develop your casting style and understand what you want to cast about. If you don’t know which channels to cast in, you can study this [dashboard](https://dune.com/ilemi/farcaster-explorer). * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/8ba3b35f785ed5844c005e7ae153bd91.png) How to Find the Most Important People to Reply to? -------------------------------------------------- Remember I mentioned the list of 73 people from which openrank calculation starts? Reply to them! How to find them? It’s simple! Because I prepared a Dashboard in Dune where you can find this information! [https://dune.com/edd/the-most-popular-degen-users](https://dune.com/edd/the-most-popular-degen-users) **Instructions:** ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/4b7716884e87306e716723922dc6f2db.png) 1. Information about people from whom the openrank calculation starts. I used the same query as openrank, but the information already slightly differs. I think the information about the people from whom the rating stats is accurate by about 50-60%. The closer to the end, the more likely the information is incorrect. 2. Degen user ranking based only on openrank (I got this by following the allowance calculations in the official Dune from Degen. The information should be very close to accurate). Your rank will differ from your allowance calculation rank; this is normal (the rating is based only on openrank). Also, I didn’t find dwr.eth in the table (I don’t know the exact reason for this), so some people might be missing. 3. If you enter a person's FID and scroll down, you'll find brief information about the person and their favorite channels (this might come in handy). ![](https://paragraph.xyz/editor/callout/information-icon.png) If there are any problems with the dashboard, please let me know. This is my first dashboard, and I might have made some mistakes in creating it. The airstack system does not affect your rank in the degen system as much, but the Airstack system also studies your ranking, so an alternative option would be to keep an eye on [this](https://airstack.xyz/notatoken) ranking (it is daily). * * * Why Will You Love Replying? --------------------------- Even when I started, I did replying partly for selfish reasons. But over time, I noticed that more and more people were noticing me. One day, I wrote to a large account. What came out of it? I made friends with them. After that, I started meeting more and more new people. Even this article and its idea came thanks to these people. So, don't forget the main rule and essence of why most people are here: **be yourself and have fun!** * * * ### Addition Here you won’t find any more information about replying; I just wanted to share that this is one of my first big works, and I would be very interested in hearing your opinion about it. I'm ready to hear not only good comments, as any criticism will help me understand what was missing and how to improve it in the future. That's my [Farcaster](https://warpcast.com/eddon), by the way. I also want to thank [Maretus](https://warpcast.com/maretus.eth) for the idea and support in writing this article. Thanks to every new friend I met in Farcaster. And of course, **thank you** for reading to the very end! --- *Originally published on [Eddon](https://paragraph.com/@eddon/the-power-of-reply)*