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Dan Romero's @dwr.eth reframing of Farcaster as "social + crypto wallets + programmability" is a significant step forward, highlighting the platform's emergent properties and appeal to crypto-native innovators. This idea can be distilled into a simple message: “Grow with Crypto.”
Not everyone needs or wants a new social network. However, innovators—those who value experimentation, risk-taking, and being ahead of the curve—do. Farcaster is uniquely positioned to attract these early adopters, offering artists, creators, and builders an unmatched opportunity to shape the future of digital interaction.
Target Audience Mismatch
Innovators are the core DAU of Farcaster. However current onboarding efforts lack a clear focus on this audience. Broad word-of-mouth campaigns miss the nuance, leading to adoption and retention challenges.
Solution: Equip existing users to invite the right friends by clarifying the target audience and their attributes (e.g., risk-takers, builders, artists). Use prompts like, "Which of your friends thrives in fast-changing, experimental spaces, or which of your friends wants to be the first to try something new?"
Value Proposition Communication
Farcaster’s unique value—better engagement, monetization with low take rates, ownership of the social graph, and an innovation-centric culture—isn’t immediately clear to potential newcomers. The high switching costs from traditional platforms make this a barrier.
Solution: Amplify user testimonials in outbound communication, e.g.:
“Engagement here with 70 followers is better than on X with 140k followers.” @artvisionnft
Highlight rapid growth stories, like new users gaining 100 followers in days with meaningful interactions.
User stories of earnings from tips, moxie, subscriptions, and token trading add social proof to the monetization they're not getting on other platforms. Jason @betashop.eth regularly shares this social proof. https://warpcast.com/betashop.eth/0x1642b540
Frame these stories as proof of Farcaster's superior culture and distribution.
Retention of Non-Innovators
Non-innovators struggle with Farcaster’s rapid evolution and experimental nature, leading to low retention. This audience shouldn’t be the focus now.
Solution: Double down on attracting and retaining innovators who align with Farcaster’s pace and culture. Early adopters and non-innovators can be targeted later as the ecosystem matures.
To resonate with artists, creators, and builders, the messaging should emphasize:
Distribution: “Get meaningful engagement with a fraction of the audience size.”
Community: “Collaborate with like-minded innovators in an ever-evolving space.”
Status: “Join a circle of crypto-native pioneers shaping the future.”
Monetization: “Own your audience and create new revenue streams.”
By refining this approach, Farcaster can strengthen its position as the social network of choice for crypto-native innovators ready to build, experiment, and shape the future. Let’s focus on messaging that makes innovators feel seen, valued, and excited to join.
Jonathan Colton
71 comments
onboarding fail 🥲 Is there an additional X requirement to join farcaster with it? None of my friends who tried to join by connecting their X was able to.
tell them i will sponsor the $1 jeez
but also, i honestly get it, and its self-selecting if anything we are mostly innovators / early adopters
Paging @jonathancolton
pls do so I can send them this every day of the week that ends with a “y”
Will DM.
@gt were you able to resolve the issue ?
I always buy an invite & forward the invite e-mail...and if they don't use it, it just gets returned to me.
As squad CFO we need this fixed.
It's literally almost impossible to onboard people on farcaster now. They made it that way
Tried onboarding few people too and I faced the same issue
I also wasn’t able to use twitter Had to pay on chain fee
farcaster is and should be the place where onchain culture and ideas originate, then go mainstream.
This is it.
100% agree and the key to me is ease of onchain activities with frames and the tight viral loops with the social graph Perfect Go to market and user experience
Yesss
a social incubator
from farcaster to the world.
As reddit has become more mainstream, it has felt to me that farcaster can fill that space as it grows allowing people to find niche communities and cultivate original ideas
̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶g̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶i̶n̶s̶t̶r̶e̶a̶m̶
100 percent agree. Its already happening with clanker and other projects alike!
most definitely!
hard agree!
/artcoin will fix it
Consumer social products and marketing 1. Marketing creates 1) awareness and, hopefully, 2) demand to sign up 2. For nearly all consumer apps, ~50% of new sign ups never come back to the app after the first day! This declines over the next 30 days to get to a measure of day 30 (d30) retention. 3. Ideally, this decline curve “flattens” (i.e. asymptotic) or even “smiles”. This means you have a retentive product and you can measure $X spent turns into Y downloads and into Z sign ups and into A retained users. 4. However, if your product does not have a retentive curve, then all spending will do is make metrics go up for a bit and then air will slowly come out of the balloon. 5. Retentive social products work because their core value proposition and product / functionality / features creates long-term retention. Exceptional products do that and have a viral growth component (k-factor). 6. So before spending time and money marketing, be sure you have a product that benefits from the marketing.
Related reading https://warpcast.com/dwr.eth/0x97bb234d https://articles.sequoiacap.com/retention
Users forget about you the minute they have left your app. You are growing Farcaster through Warpcast, and Warpcast Product Manager should work, IMHO, on user retention through specific features that aim at getting a mobile user to open up the app again. Let’s not call that marketing if it feels better.
1. That's not marketing, it's product. 2. We send many notifications to bring people back to the app. 3. Sending notifications and other retention features don't just magically create retention. :)
Let’s just not categorise it 😅 Maybe the push notifications are not the triggering one, maybe people don’t find their tribe here 🤷🏻♂️😢
Tbh this is a controversial take that shouldn’t be controversial
Add to that the fact that sometimes you need to onboard a whole group of people at the same time in order for them to stay and feel the pain (or call Harry - @nikitabier - Potter)
To give one last hint, here’s my personal case: I arrived in December 2023 and I didn’t understand anything at all. Yet, I’ve been here since 2017, and back in 2017, I was using Steemit, so I’m an OG of decentralized social networks 😄. But Warpcast didn’t retain me it was too unclear. Then I heard about Degen, and I came back. I wanted to earn some, so I put a bit more effort into understanding, and that’s when I had the revelation. Thanks to profiles like @imthedude and @kylepatrick.eth , who distributed tons of Ham and Degen, they motivated me to stay. Then, every project I discovered here excited me more than the previous one. And recently, @proxystudio definitively changed my life with clanking, and now here I am, 100% involved 🫡. Hopefully, my case can shed some light on the situation for profiles similar to mine.
Agree that make money / find alpha can create retention. Challenge is scaling that for every user. :)
I trust your vision so far @dwr , you haven’t disappointed me, even if I don’t always agree. I’ll keep following and will do everything I can, at my humble level, to contribute alongside all of you to Farcaster’s success 🔥 Only a matter of time, contribution and effort.
Why not leverage network effects to seed retention? Empower and incentivize current users to onboard users who will retain and remain active
How does twitter scale paying every user they pay monthly? Genuine question
🫡 🫡
Each day a little more grateful! Truly, thank you 🫶 @specubot Send 40 specu to kylepatrick.eth
clank clank thanks for playing @sangohan, step by step hopefully bigger steps soon
Tysm @proxystudio ! I’m so fulfilled and motivated for what’s next! Very satisfied with the current situation you know our motto. Brick by brick 🧱
💯💯💯
What was the last retentive social product?
TikTok
TikTok had a new and novel form favor (short form supercut video) that made it unique. Similar to Snapchat (stories/ephemeral messaging) and other notable social media platforms that retained users. Do you think Farcaster needs a new and novel form factor to onboard and retain users?
Retention. Retention. Retention. I really believe need FC short form video and truly better algos (state of the art ML with online learning & smart exploration). Also when you have it you can start hyper personalising notifications (where you are, which device, which client, which WiFi even, what time of day, weather). This is the big update we will push for @mbd models - support for contextual features. There is critical social graph mass for doing this training for some segments on FC @dwr.
> I really believe need FC short form video and truly better algos (state of the art ML with online learning & smart exploration). You need your user based to skew as video creators for that to be useful.
Right… will be a tough 0 to 1 again but worth it (?) - also I realised some +20-30% reels and TikTok’s are AI generated now… it is getting easier and easier to become a video creator using AI so thinking everyone will be doing it soon. I just tried zebracat.ai , photoAI.com, getglam.app today and will be producing video content now for sure.
two qs how do you model the fact that most of your target audience is on a singular alternative platform? (i.e. you know who they are and where to find them again) considering that crypto social is a lot more financialized, do you think web2 user acq frameworks apply cleanly?
1. Makes it harder, especially if your UX is mostly a derivative of said platform. The more we diverge from X / Twitter, the better for Farcaster. That said, the differentiation needs to yield sufficiently interesting content / experiences. 2. Retention is retention whether web2 or web3. You can only create durable value if users stick around.
at the sf farcaster meetup some other techies came up to us to ask what meetup it was and we were all like FARCASTER and they were like whazzat and we mumbled "ᶜʳʸᵖᵗᵒ ᵗʷᶦᵗᵗᵉʳ" what would be a better way to shorthand describe farcaster?
questions are more around the role of kickstarting viral loops to generate engagement and thus interesting content it seems your model is full utility value with no concept of giving yourself as many chances to get lucky obv too many founders rely too heavily on the latter but there’s still truth to the approach
I initially thought this was a brachistochrone curve illustration, and in a way I wasn’t that far off
Some valuable thoughts from @jonathancolton on growing Farcaster All valid imo, he makes a good point that this is the time to onboard innovators and friends who thrive in rapid moving and experimental spaces 💯 This is how we achieve /success! https://paragraph.xyz/@jonathancolton.eth/farcaster-where-crypto-native-innovators-shape-the-future
Thank you for sharing this Asha!
It's a great write-up. And I agree 100% with everything. First people to onboard should be people inclined to experimental stuff, otherwise we lose them. And spending time and resources to bring people we might lose very fast is definitely not the way 😅
🎯
wow! Great 👏 👏
Great read!
I agree, JC makes very good points
Very cool read
Right? Makes perfect sense
Great work 💓💓
Thanks for sharing 💖
@farcaster isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. It’s for innovators, especially those focused on on-chain innovation. To resonate with artists, creators, and builders, the messaging should emphasize: Distribution: “Get meaningful engagement with a fraction of the audience size.” Community: “Collaborate with like-minded innovators in an ever-evolving space.” Status: “Join a circle of crypto-native pioneers shaping the future.” Monetization: “Own your audience and create new revenue streams.” By refining this approach, Farcaster can strengthen its position as the social network of choice for crypto-native innovators ready to build, experiment, and shape the future. Let’s focus on messaging that makes innovators feel seen, valued, and excited to join. https://paragraph.xyz/@jonathancolton.eth/farcaster-where-crypto-native-innovators-shape-the-future?referrer=0xe19753f803790D5A524D1fD710D8a6D821a8Bb55
This is it 💯
Feeling seen and valued gives us the motivation to grow.
Thanks for sharing 🙏
That's good 🧡
We need to get the next 'right' 100K DAUs. @jonathancolton has the most compelling marketing strategy I have read to achieve. I will certainly copy & paste some taglines to attract my circles and I hope @dwr does so, too.
This is excellent. Thx for sharing.
so on point. Always looked at FC as potentially a way to attract other builders