Welcome to Farcaster 101, a 12 part educational series designed to introduce marketing professionals to the fundamentals of Farcaster. Presented by GM Farcaster in partnership with Snickerdoodle, this series will help you understand what makes Farcaster unique and how to grow your brand presence on the platform. Each webinar is accompanied by a blog post summarizing key insights and additional resources. Plus, we offer weekly office hours for personalized support.

Module 1: What is Farcaster

In module 1, we introduce you to Farcaster with the following topics:

• Audience: Who uses Farcaster today?

• Platform: What is Farcaster and the distinction between protocols and clients

• Decentralized Social: Explore the pros/cons of decentralized social networks and how they differ from traditional social media

• Farcaster Ecosystem: A brief preview into the dynamic and expansive ecosystem of Farcaster apps

Audience: Who's on Farcaster?

The Farcaster audience is made up of early adopters, builders, and optimists. These tech-savvy users are not just crypto enthusiasts but also engineers, product developers, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs who are open to experimenting with new ideas. This makes Farcaster a prime platform for brands looking to reach a forward-thinking and innovative audience.

On Farcaster, you’ll find people who are willing to try new products and ideas, providing valuable feedback and engagement. What sets the community apart is its emphasis on authenticity, positivity, and experimentation. As Adrienne mentioned in the webinar, Farcaster has been criticized for being “too nice,” but that creates a welcoming space for honest conversations and meaningful interactions.

The Platform: What Makes Farcaster Unique?

Farcaster is built on Ethereum’s layer two network, Optimism, making it decentralized and permissionless. Unlike centralized social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter, Farcaster ensures that users own their identity, their audience, and their content. This transparency and data ownership are key differences between Farcaster and traditional social media platforms.

Farcaster’s data is open and composable, meaning developers can build on top of it, creating apps, tools, and new user experiences. This creates an ever-evolving ecosystem where brands and developers alike can tap into the platform’s rich potential.

One of the most critical aspects of Farcaster’s platform is its separation of the protocol (Farcaster) and the client (Warpcast). Warpcast is the most popular app for accessing Farcaster, but many other apps allow users to interact with the protocol. This is similar to how email works—you might use Gmail, but someone else could use Yahoo, and you’d still communicate seamlessly. On Farcaster, you own your data, and if one client, like Warpcast, shuts down, you can move to another app without losing your followers.

Benefits of Decentralized Social Media

Why is decentralized social so important? It’s all about ownership, privacy, and freedom. Traditional social networks use an “attract-extract” cycle, where they lure users in with benefits, then extract value from them once they’ve grown large enough. Users and creators on centralized platforms have little control over data ownership or monetization, and they often find themselves at the mercy of shifting algorithms or policies.

In contrast, Farcaster’s decentralized model gives you full control over your data and audience. You’re not locked into a single platform. If Warpcast decides one day to change its algorithm or shadow ban you, you can move to another client without losing your followers. This is especially powerful for brands, allowing you to maintain control over how you engage with your audience.

Moreover, the open nature of Farcaster means that builders can experiment with tokenization, incentivizing engagement in ways that aren’t possible on traditional platforms. For example, tokens like Moxie or Degen, built by independent developers, allow for creative monetization models.

The Farcaster Ecosystem

Farcaster isn’t just a platform; it’s an ecosystem. There are many tools and apps that plug into the protocol, from media platforms like GM Farcaster and podcasts like OK Banger, to tools like Paragraph, which allows for seamless integration of newsletters into the platform. Brands can create interactive, composable experiences that engage users without ever leaving the platform. The potential for frames—a unique feature of Farcaster that allows for in-feed apps like event RSVPs and job postings—is enormous.

What's Next

In the next module in our Farcaster 101 series, we walk you through setting up you Farcaster account, creating your profile and sending your first cast.

In the meantime, here are some additional learning resources and materials for you to check out, and don’t hesitate to join our office hours to ask questions.

More Resources

• Farcaster CTO Varun Srinivasan's definition of sufficient decentralization and the vision for Farcaster

• The State of Farcaster: insights from 5K+ participants and their 38K+ connected wallets

• Farcaster technical documentation

• Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet by Chris Dixon: A book about the history of the internet and why blockchain should be the backbone for the internet of the future.

• Watch Module 1 on YouTube