Frames made my first week on Farcaster INSANE. I minted so many NFTS and even got to buy Girl Scout Cookies @cookie in a frame. This was game changer and I knew there was something cool happening here. I also got offered a copy of a book by @cdixon.eth called Read. Write. Own. This book changed my life and made me lean into Farcaster even more. I made 2 friends because of Girl Scout Cookies. The energy on Farcaster was so amazing that people who couldn't even get the cookies sent to them still wanted to buy them! I jokingly said I'd be happy to take the cookies in the US and @samuellhuber.eth and @sum offered to send me cookies...

Who knew that cookies would be the catalyst for friendship... Because I was following @sum I got a notification that he dropped an NFT collection called /animeoutcasts. I had ignored NFTS for almost a year, but his preview was beautiful and we were cookie friends, so of course I minted his art. I lucked out and pulled 2 beautiful female PFPs. I was so stunned to see gorgeous and representative art that I felt inspired. I made Fan Art.....and I posted it. For the first time ever, I shared my art with other humans. But it wasn't for them, it was for Sum to say thank you for making something beautiful. This was Feb 18. And then someone asked if they could buy my FanArt.....buy...my...art....what.....????

Next thing I knew, I made 11 pieces and put them up for auction and had to learn how to mint my own NFTS on @highlight. To whomever on the team writes the help documentation, Thank you. I love you. Meanwhile, I was so overwhelmed with everything else going on inside of Farcaster. There was this thing called DEGEN and it was so confusing. There was a tiny butler called @degentip but it wasn't from THE Degen team but another project and I was just lost. So I decided to write about it. I found @paragraph and wrote my first article. It got noticed and I replied to everyone who needed help with degen. https://paragraph.xyz/@pichi

The anime community I was part of begged for a PFP collection. There were about 800 members in the channel so I committed to making a collection of 888 so everyone could get one. I spent about 18 hours a day for 2 weeks making the collection and the host of the community asked me to make some art for the channel...and then kicked me from the channel right before my collection was set to launch. I was an AI artist, not a "real one". This gave me major imposter syndrome. I learned the hard way that if you don't own the channel, you can be removed anytime. So I started my own channels and focused on growing them while preparing for my first large scale mint. I was really struggling with the AI Model at the time and my original auction had some problems. The AI kept taking me too literally and I was frustrated, but rather than delete the mistakes, I decided to mint them as a test. And the Anime Outcasts: FUBAR edition was born. https://opensea.io/collection/anime-outcasts-fubar-edition

This was my first 30 days on Farcaster. At the same time, I started posting in the /japan channel and became friends with the wonderful @beecuriousrious and helped her cohost the channel and planned on meeting up with her IRL when I got to Tokyo. I deployed the /animeoutcasts collection and got on a plane to Japan. There were some awesome folks in /tokyo who wanted to hold a Farcaster meetup and I was super excited to meet them IRL. @jtgi made this cool tool called @automod and I set it up for the /lp channel because we were overwhelmed with spam. @renstern.eth took charge of setting up the first Japan Farcaster meetup and asked me to present my project at the meetup.... https://opensea.io/collection/anime-outcasts

On March 23 I was still in Tokyo waiting impatiently for the cherry blossoms to bloom. In 2023, they bloomed the earliest on record and in 2024 the bloomed the latest on record. But I got to meet a ton of amazing builders and by the end of the night, we were all committed to brining @renstern.eth vision for a TokyoDAO to life. It would be open to all, and help bridge the gap between Western casters and those in Japan. He created the account @tokyowip for Tokyo Work in Progress that very night at a bar. https://linktr.ee/tokyodao

The same night as the Tokyo Meet up at the after party after party, @cynthia and @bichonxattack told me they were bumed that they hadn't seen enough cherry blossoms and that the Sakura Rugged them hard by being so late. They inspired my next experiment: Sakura Rugs. You bought a digital rug, but you got a real life gift package with all the limited editions items I found in Japan for sakura season. https://zora.co/collect/base:0x5a40af687c79e40397514ee2001c3f626de804ab I too was waiting for the blossoms. I went to Japan to photograph them and do a photography NFT collection (cough /sakura /nftrees ) and then realized I couldn't mint on mobile on @highlight and this would have to wait until I had a laptop again...in May. Meanwhile, we convinced the Tokyo crew that we were all going to go to /farcon and I would cut my trip short. I would be their loud American.....https://paragraph.xyz/@pichi/japan-invades-farcon

I casted a lot of my trip to Japan on Farcaster from March to Farcon, but April introduced Power Badges and Shadowbans. This was really hard on my Japanese friends. Most of them were invisible and I started to get louder about it and tracking these changes. Farcon was awesome and made me decide to lean in further to the Farcaster ecosystem, but also get more critical about it's flaws. Once I was stateside, I started hosting a weekly session on @farhouse called Power Hour. I met a lot of amazing people via these audio sessions and was able to make a new wave of friends because voice is so much more powerful that text. As the spam on the network grew worse, meeting people and hearing them talk really mattered.

I became frustrated that I couldn't see my Japanese friends on Warpcast anymore. I made a bunch more channels related to Japan so they would have a safe space to cast where I could ensure their visibility regardless of their power badge status. I encouraged them to make their own spaces and lift each other up. I created a hypersub for my art, but it really became focused on getting all members power badges so they could be seen. But we were also fighting real spammers. So I decided to run an experiment with /anime-manga If I gated the channel using a cheap hypersub, could I ensure real people were visible, reward them for real content, and block spam? The answer was yes. The channel flourished and automod was working overtime, but it proved that if you create community with purpose, you can make it were everyone thrives and wins. https://paragraph.xyz/@pichi/animemanga

The rest of the Summer turned into prep for BaseCamp, my IRL commitments, and helping folks get seen on Warpcast. And then Moxie came....and well, here we are. Power Badges are gone...kinda of...the old algo still determines if your frames are collapsed or full but I'm told it's really going away soon. Since ActiveonFCNetwork True or False Flag sounds stupid, I renamed Power Hour to, The State of the Union. You can find all the info in /farcasterunion I'm all in on Farcaster. It's changed my life and I will keep building here, but I want to make it work for everyone. Power Badges were rough, spam labels were rougher, but new channel changes are going to bring back visibility to those who were in the shadows. It's going to take some time, but it will be worth it. Keep building here and don't give up. You never know, one interacton, one message, one box of Girl Scout cookies, one mint, one piece of fan art, one meet up, could change your life.