imagine you’re building a boat. not some massive vessel yet, but a little thing made of branches and leaves, floating in a pond.

the pond is calm. no real waves, just the occasional frog hopping on, or a gust of wind testing your balance. it’s the perfect place to start: you can patch leaks quickly, test how it reacts to small ripples, see if it survives a rainy day. you’re not risking much, but you’re learning a lot.

this is what Farcaster and Base feel like. a safe, tight pond. not huge in size (yet), but full of curious, influential early adopters who’ll happily jump on your boat and tell you what breaks. the conditions are forgiving enough that you can move fast, fix issues and experiment

but here’s the catch: you don’t build boats for ponds. nobody really needs to cross a pond.

so what’s next? at some point, one of two things happens:

• the pond grows: it becomes a lake, or connects to a river that leads to the ocean.

• you move: you take your learnings and set up shop by a bigger body of water.

either way, the game changes. your twig-and-leaf boat won’t cut it anymore. you’ll need to design a more solid hull, adjust the sails, and build for stronger currents.

if the pond is Farcaster, then the lake could be Worldcoin (another miniapp ecosystem, 10x more people). the ocean? that’s the app store. billions of people, but also storms, shipping lanes, and coast guards watching your every move.

don’t mistake the pond as the final destination. it’s your training ground. your goal isn’t to build the perfect pond boat, it’s to learn how to build boats at all.

• in the pond (Farcaster/Base): optimize for speed, community feedback, and shipping cycles. DAUs are smaller, but everyone matters and influences others.

• in the lake (Worldcoin): optimize for scaling infra, handling bigger waves, and onboarding people who don’t know you.

• in the ocean (App Store): optimize for stability, compliance, distribution, and surviving the storms. here, discovery isn’t free, you need sails big enough to catch new winds.

each step forces you to take your learnings and upgrade the vessel.

the smartest builders won’t just build one boat. they’ll keep a skiff in the pond for experiments, a ferry in the lake for mass movement, and a liner for the ocean to reach the big ports. all connected by the same core design, but adapted to the waters.

and the real win is not just the boats. it’s the shipyard. the system you develop for repeatedly building, testing, and upgrading vessels no matter where you are.

need some help building your boat? with builders.garden we shipped 20+ boats on Farcaster and Base already - reach out to me on Farcaster if you want to set sail together.