Farcaster is a playground for crypto experiments—I find myself discovering and trying something new every week. This is my attempt to log my experiences. I write it for myself. I hope you find it useful too.
Earlier this week Farcaster (the client) launched a feature where you can collect a cast as an NFT (ERC-721) Creators can opt in to make their casts collectable. People can bid on these casts. The auctions runs for 24 hours (unless they are really old in which case it runs for 7 days)
I was a bit skeptical about the feature. I'm sure some of you still remember the Jack Dorsey's OG tweet screenshoted and auctioned off as an NFT. I have come around though, a bit.
There are some content that make you feel so strongly that you would like to express your appreciation in ways more than just a like. I did feel that way for one cast, this one by @frametheglobe, about the Bengal Famine.
While I lost track of that auction, I did manage to snag a few I resonated with or felt would be nice or funny to own.
About 1500 people have placed bids on 5500 casts so far. [Reference. Thanks Mahesh]
My hunch is the initial euphoria is driven either by speculation or a desire of being part of something collective. Having said that I see it as an interesting primitive of expressing appreciation and you get something in return recorded onchain in return of that expression.
Likes became tips. Tips became bids.
SIMPS R US is a new mini app by Kasra. I think I first discovered Kasra from a mini app called bounce or falling that he launched way back in Feb this year. He has been one of the most voracious shippers of the Farcaster ecosystem. One of his many skills that I really admire is his ability to catch up on a farcaster meta and launch something that captures people's attention.
SIMPS R US shows you folks, the casts, and the people whose casts the person is bidding on. It's a fun app and has Pugson on top right now. Kind of wild seeing people spend thousands of bucks collecting casts. Head over to the app. It's fun.
This post by Hypersub founder Jonny resonated very strongly.
"we don't bear the risks and opportunity costs of becoming founders so that other men will come to our rescue. we do it because of an irrational belief in our own abilities."
hi been heads down on something new. wanted to share some thoughts on building for creators and consumers in crypto the past ~3yrs there's roughly 10k (+/- 5k) real monthly transacting users in consumer crypto and their desire for new metas is insatiable for builders, this presents two possible outcomes: 1) (default) you build a thing and no one cares. no one uses it 2) you build a thing and it becomes a meta (hypersub experienced this briefly). people use it for a little while but eventually get bored. a new meta emerges and everyone moves on from here your options are: 3) go back to the drawing board 4) chase the new meta gaining traction is really hard and most builders don't want to give it up. so most chase, hoping their thing will eventually transcend the cycle and achieve breakout success by gaining adoption among a wider audience but outside of infra and trading, thats never happened. (fun thought experiments: why not? will it ever? if so, what are likely to be the causal factors?) so— 5) you can stay the course, keep grinding, and hope that the castle you've been building in someone else's kingdom eventually prospers or 6) exit 5 leads to burnout if you're bootstrapped and bankruptcy if you're vc-backed. hope is not a strategy (sorry) you can exit to a categorically different market, or to a different segment of crypto. the former likely means ai, the later means infra or trading. the problem is that you're late. the market has matured, incumbents have a lot of leverage, and its hard to differentiate we don't bear the risks and opportunity costs of becoming founders so that other men will come to our rescue. we do it because of an irrational belief in our own abilities. my advice: build where there's durable demand. sans infinite runway or corporate sponsorship you'll die otherwise i realize this sounds negative and pessimistic. sorry about that, not my intention. this message is for the builders who are trying to figure out where to invest their time and energy. its what i wish someone shared with me when i started if you're a founder and struggling with figuring out where and what to do next, hmu happy to share more 1:1 rooting for every single one of you 💛 https://imagedelivery.net/BXluQx4ige9GuW0Ia56BHw/e538362a-45b3-4181-d7fb-f6a2a4f55000/original https://farcaster.xyz/nonlinear.eth/0x96c90863
4 years in crypto, 14 in startups before that, and I still wake up feeling like a noob. As a founder, you learn quickly you can’t fight the market. You can only try to understand it.
Most of my time goes into this one question - what is the market truly hungry for that crypto can uniquely serve significantly better than anything else out there?
The world has a insatiable appetite for investing and speculating that gives people a shot to uplift their lives. Crypto serves this well and is reflected in the applications we see onchain and offchain that enable that.
But I keep wondering: is there something deeper, still hidden, waiting to be built?
Over the last few weeks, 0xpuneet and I have been building The Clankline - a leaderboard for the Clanker Community. What started as a fun experiment has now crossed 1,000 users, with a few hundred logging in daily.
We're now focused on making it more useful. Last week, we shipped two key features:
– You can now see your Clanker tokens and weekly PnL
– And compare your performance with your best pals on Farcaster.
Plenty more in the works. It’s fun building. Stay tuned.
Rch
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