On March 20, XCopy & Neonglitch86 released an Open Edition named "Mutatio" on Base. Over 1 million editions were minted by 38K people, all within 24 hours. An interesting fact that caught my attention and sent me down this rabbit hole was that about 22% of the minters were Farcaster users.
Web3 is no stranger to metas that create massive hype before fizzling out. But in this instance, a deeper look reveals a promise of how Base & Farcaster ecosystem can help take the movement of crypto art forward.
Base is a secure, low-cost Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain built on Optimism's OP Stack and developed by Coinbase. Farcaster is a decentralized social network protocol built on Optimism. Currently, Base has ~300K and Farcaster has ~30K Daily Active Users (DAU).
This leads us to the question how the art community is evolving on Base and what role Farcaster plays in it. Base Mainnet went live in August, 2023. Base kicked off the launch with a multi-week celebration of onchain creativity. Deekay in collaboration with Cozomo de’Medici launched an Open Edition “New Era” that was minted over 70K times.
Wow. The last 24 hours have been unforgettable
~71,500 mints
27,098 holders of the ETH edition alone
It's been an honor to work w @deekaymotion on this drop
Grazie @coinbase & @FWBtweets for making it a part of #OnchainSummer
To every artist, builder, and patron helping…
~71,500 mints
27,098 holders of the ETH edition alone
It's been an honor to work w @deekaymotion on this drop
Grazie @coinbase & @FWBtweets for making it a part of #OnchainSummer
To every artist, builder, and patron helping…
1,594
Since then, the NFT primary mint volume has grown to $26.7 Million (Feb, 2024) on Base. Though this is only 5% of Ethereum's volume, Base surpasses Ethereum in active participants, with 742K users, roughly three times more than Ethereum.
Here is the interesting bit. Farcaster users make up for almost 30% of the NFT Primary Mint Volume ($8.6 Million).
Farcaster experienced a surge in users earlier this year in January due to opening up the network for more people to join and introducing new crypto-native features like frames and channels and ecosystem additions such as the $degen token. It presents a new platform for art discovery, transaction, and engagement.
Presently, Farcaster has over 90 channels on art-related topics. Here is how Farcaster Official Docs describe channels.
A channel is a public space for your community to have conversations around a topic. Creating a channel starts a new feed for your community. People can join, cast and find other interesting people. It sparks conversations that wouldn’t otherwise happen on the home feed.
/art channel has over 6K people following it. A typical week sees around 3500 casts posted on the channel. But the important aspect to look at is the engagement each casts get. On average a cast on /art channel gets a healthy engagement of ~4-5 replies, ~12-13 likes, and ~1-2 recasts. You have channels across genres, projects, and there is even one dedicated to art collectors called /collector-walls.
Where channels help in discovery and contextual conversations, frames help in seamless transaction and minting experience. Frames are interactive apps that show up on Farcaster feed. Users can take different onchain and offchain actions such as mint tokens, swap, and more.
"Fireball" by Totty was among the initial artworks mintable through Frames. It was free to mint, and within hours, hundreds were collected, with the final supply capped at 999.
totty 🔥🧶🆓️ on Warpcast
free art NFT! - recast this first and wait a little bit - click to mint - if you see an error message, wait a bit and try again _fireball_ is a recent everyday from my _totty everyday_ series, mintable exclusively via Frames as an edition of 420 fireball-frame.vercel.app/api/fireball-mint http://fireball-frame.vercel.app/api/fireball-mint
This was in January, 2024. In last 30 days, close to a million dollar worth of onchain transactions have been enabled through frames.
If you’re an artist, an art lover, or a builder, you need to be on Farcaster or atleast explore it. Farcaster has forged a vibrant ecosystem where where people engage in meaningful discussions and people can freely express themselves while retaining sovereignty over their network and content.
These are still early days. Farcaster still have a warm and cozy feel about it. Join us on the far side.
References
Base DAU: https://dune.com/queries/2834598/4740668/ by @watermeloncp
Farcaster DAU: https://dune.com/queries/3024331/5024400 by @vincent
NFT Volumes & Mints: https://dune.com/sealaunch/nft-mints-evms by @sealaunch
NFT Volumes on Base by FC Users: https://dune.com/queries/3569864/6008746/
Farcaster Art related channels: https://github.com/kugusha/art-farcaster/ by @kugusha
Frames Transactions: https://dune.com/jhackworth/frames?past_x_day_nfab5d=30 by @jhackworth
Back with this week's Picks, which you can read without leaving your feed w/ the new frames experience! Read more about new frames here: https://paragraph.xyz/@blog/new-paragraph-frame-on-farcaster Onto the picks!
Winner of 1st place in @kiwi's Farcaster 2026 writing contest, @tombeck.eth argues that Farcaster, like the early automobile, is a transformative technology struggling to gain mainstream adoption. To succeed, it must break free from Web2 social media paradigms and lean into its unique advantages: portability, sovereignty, and composability. "Farcaster needs to show the public not just that its protocol works, but that it enables a fundamentally better way of experiencing the web." https://paragraph.xyz/@driftless/farcaster-is-a-car
@thatalexpalmer.eth shares his principles for product design, emphasizing clarity, predictability, and accessibility while also diving into practical heuristics that shape user experience. "Above all, design should be useful. Get the user’s job done and get out of the way as fast as possible." https://paragraph.xyz/@thatalexpalmer/my-principles-for-product-design
@rch explores the intersection of art, Base, and Farcaster, highlighting how these platforms are shaping the future of onchain creativity. "If you’re an artist, an art lover, or a builder, you need to be on Farcaster or at least explore it." https://paragraph.xyz/@rch/art,-base,-and-farcaster
Thanks for including this in the weekly picks @reidtandy! 🫡
my first post on @paragraph it was mutatio that forced me take notice although i had been here for a year then https://paragraph.xyz/@rch/art,-base,-and-farcaster
An interesting fact from the "MUTATIO" mint that got my attention & sent me down this rabbit hole was that about 22% of the minters were @farcaster users. My first post on @paragraph exploring the impact base & fc are having and can have on crypto art. https://paragraph.xyz/@rch/art,-base,-and-farcaster