The Ever Expanding WCU (Warpcast Universe) - Power Badge Users, Hub Operators...

Congratulations on joining the community, fellow Warpcaster (that's how we refer to those on the platform)! This guide aims to cover more advanced topics than my previous guide, as I hope you found my last article useful despite the numerous changes to the algorithm. From the initial "engage to earn" system to the current Power Badge criteria for visibility (and earning), and the potential shift towards holding $degen to earn in July (as per Wake's recent cast). Therefore, it's my intention to simplify the onboarding process in this guide, enabling you as a newbie to earn not just $degen but more, allowing to maximize your initial $5 investment without having to figure everything out on your own.

Since the start of Season 4 Airdrop on May 1st, many Warpcasters have noticed a significant decrease in their tipping allocation. Tippers have become less generous, and there's been an influx of bot accounts farming $degen airdrops (let's face it, you can't compete with bots that can cast 24/7 without needing sleep or having real-life obligations). Therefore, you need to be smarter than just working hard on liking, recasting, and replying to rewarding casts like in the good old days. Season 5 Airdrop (before Season 6 starts on July 4th) brings major changes, and you can learn more by reading Ryan's latest Ultimate FAQ (be sure to follow his updates for better strategies in each Season!😉).

To combat bots and address the airdrop farming issue, Dan (the founder of Farcaster) had to come up with the controversial Power Badge system, which is like Marmite - you either love it or hate it.

What's a Power Badge(a.k.a. PB)?

As you explore the Warpcast universe, you'll notice some users with a Purple Lightning badge at the end of their display name. This badge is awarded to only 3,000 to 4,000 selected users (less than 1% of the 700,000+ Warpcasters as of the current date) on the Warpcast platform. It serves as a filter for Dan, who works tirelessly to provide a sufficiently decentralized social network for all of us on Farcaster.

You might think of Power Badge holders as representatives in a parliament, speaking for the people. Just as a President can't personally attend to every citizen, Dan can't engage with every user. Imagine if you were in his position – wouldn't you feel overwhelmed if every time you opened the purple app, it was filled with content from almost everyone? The Power Badge system helps manage this information overload, don't you think? 😉

Therefore, the PB allows users to curate their feeds and interact with contents from other interesting PB holders when their priority mode is on. If you don't have a PB, your casts (as a newbie) will rarely appear on their main feed unless they follow you. That's why who you follow as a PB holder makes a huge difference, as what I've shared in my previous article about how my wallet got drained. Non-PB holders' casts might only appear if users click "Show more replies", or if the algorithm doesn't consider your cast as spam or bot activity.

Be cautious, these accounts are real to either farm the $degens/other tokens to make a living like I once heard that there are people who have few hundreds accounts and made over a couple millions $degens in the first 2 seasons, and some are scammers waiting for the right time to drain your wallet. Read my previous article for more if you are interested to know what happened and what to do to prevent yourself from falling prey to scammers. The good news is that @Varun (co-founder of Farcaster) mentioned that you can now report spammers or appeal if wrongly reported as one - a positive change from before.

I was lucky enough to obtain a Power Badge(PB) after initially being disqualified (can read about my story in my previous (In)complete Idiot's Guide ) until I was given a chance to play a part in the development history of Warpcast and the Farcaster Protocol, thanks to some of the most bleutiful people I met on the Warpcast Universe like @Agusti(yeah, I'm a Bleuliver🐘), @AM, @Ryan, @Pichi, @Stellabelle, @Undefined, @base, @kat, @frederick, @vlady, @beach, @kaleyn, @0xluo, @pdog, @wang and so many more. Some have lost their PB or don't bother getting one as they are just mfers (like @beach as @Pichi told him to follow some rules to get it back, but...). Rest assured, these people are worth following as their sharings will make you feel you are "L(earning)"(IYKYK😉) a lot every day.

With limited PBs to go around (yes, you can lose it too unless you are someone indispensable in the ecosystem like @vitalik, @brian or some of the OGs), not everyone is happy about the Power Badge system. It's not something you can pay for like the blue or gold tick on X (though I heard from Pichi's Farhouse i.e. Farcaster's version of Clubhouse that some are offering to sell their FID for 600 ETH!). So, if you wish to earn a PB, just put in the effort (mostly time to build trust with other PB holders) to cast in English (or your preferred language with some English). This helps because if those with higher Social Capital Value and Openrank can't understand your content, the algorithm might treat it as spam (see Dan's thought on spam) or bot activity, hurting your chance of getting a PB.

Maybe you'll not able to get immediate interactions with Dan, Vitalik or those in the top 100 rankings, but if you're genuine and interesting, just let nature takes its course. Remember, a Power Badge isn't the be-all and end-all. Choose wisely and engage in channels(use this information wisely😉) that allow you to interact with PB holders. Participate in Farhouse or some of the offline events like Farcon etc. to prove you're a real human being rather than a bot or someone with ulterior motives. It's not easy to gain people's trust without face-to-face interactions or more substantial online engagement. So, be patient and authentic in your approach.

There are also some guides that I will list in the Useful Resources Section below if you are interested to know more what are the insights by other PB holders who got theirs. However, nothing is certain, as we don't know how the algorithm might change in the coming days or weeks. So, just stay hungry, stay foolish, and learn as much as you can by being active in some important channels like /farcaster, /degentokenbase, /fc-updates. These channels will keep you informed and engaged with the community.

You can earn by being a hub operator, minting NFTs, playing games etc.?

Apart from earning $degen through normal tipping, the Warpcast Universe(WCU) offers many opportunites compared to other social networks if you know where to look. Your chances of success here are higher as you're still very early on the platform. Imagine being among the 1st batch of influencers on Tiktok or Twitter when they just started with few thousands users, that's how early you are. Warpcast (on the Farcaster protocol) is definitely here to stay, and fade this at your own risk. Look at Dan's plan for integration with X and Varun's announcement of paying Warpcaster direcly with USDC, and you'll see how big Warpcast can become as more people getting onboard. It's just going to be more difficult for latecomers.

If you are lucky, you could even win a big paycheck of a few thousands $degens or more. However, watch out for accounts that just do airdrop farming. They might not have much of tipping allowance but trick people into liking, recasting and replying to get more allowance. The algorithm still rewards those whose original casts get more engagement, but these are often grandfathered accounts that you can't easily emulate, as they might be influencers invited by the founders. Even worse, some accounts require you to tip just to enter their lucky draw, raffle or game - whatever they want to call it. Stay vigilant and don't fall for these potential traps.

A simple way to avoid falling into this trap is to check their daily tipping allowance first using some simple frames or actions (you can only add up to 8 actions for now). Please don't blindly believe everything you see. I've personally minted many NFTs using those cool frames (Solana's latest Blinks is a copycat of our frames😼) because it's so easy. I've lost count of how many people I've tipped my $degen to who promised airdrops of their project's tokens,yet I haven't heard from them since, so don't FOMO and simply join anything you see, as you might never see your hard-earned money again.

Another way to earn more than just $degen is by being early in newly launched games like Alfafrens, Farcards, Uncuts, Wildcards, and many others that pop up like mushrooms. If you're super early, you stand a higher chance of making good profits compared to latecomers. However, instead of chasing everything you see popping up, just choose 1 or 2 games that you have the time and money to play. From my experience, there are many games that are usually designed to benefit those who get in early by obtaining insider information from the game developers. It's very rare to be early just by being lucky, so take your time to explore them yourself and make informed decisions.

There are also few more ways to earn on Warpcast platform. One is by participating in newly launched memecoins through Wagmi Fairlaunch. For example, I personally aped Bleu when it launched a month ago, and since then, I have become a "Bleuliver" and made friends with @Agusti and @AM because of it. I just like the meme (the self-care blue elephant) as it is the first memecoin on Alfafrens. Over time, I've gotten to know @Agusti better and bleulive in his character and capability to build Bleu into the next DOGE (Do Only Good Everyday), so if you want to be part of making history, feel free to check out what Bleu is all about and make an informed decision to hodl some tokens. @Agusti is one of the most generous dev I know, as he always has something to incentivise $Bleu holders by rewarding us for performing simple tasks like learning how to use a new lending site, create your Bleu NFT, playing Swaye or Meme-melee on /perl.

The other way to earn on Warpcast is by joining new and established channels and being active there, such as casting. Unfortunately, I can't list all of them as I don't have the time to cast in all those channels due to real-life obligations. I encourage you to explore some of these channels such as powerbadgecabal(highly recommended to get into their private groupchat if you hold one of their NFT) and the channel's own token yourself. You can refer to my last article in the Useful Frames or Resources Section for more information.

Other than that, there are some smart people who use Warpcast to sell their NFTs or services bundled with tips they've received, such as $TN100X(Ham), $Masks, $Farther etc. Use your own judgment when choosing which tokens to reward your supporters or customers when they purchase your NFTs or services as everyone has their own preferences. Additionally, there are grants available for Builders during this Onchain Summer. It doesn't matter whether you're a technical or artistic person – everyone is considered a builder when they contribute their time and resources to the platform.

I have reservations about sharing information on hub operators, but I think it's something you should be aware of in case you come across it. There have been some opportunists offering to help people run their own nodes, which has caused havoc in the past few days, so be cautious and do your research before engaging in such offers although they claim that you can farm more airdrops by having a node.

Final Thoughts

As the platform keeps evolving, I can't say how long the information I share here will stay relevant. I was struggling to think of how to write any more guides after my (In)Complete Idiot's Guide, but the first Farcaster writing hackathon hosted by Adrienne, Prof, Ted and YB really inspired me to contribute to the future of Farcaster.

I hope to see innovations introduced that fully unleash the potential of the Power Badge. It should be a mark of assurance that holders are trustworthy Warpcasters, not just scammers waiting to prey on victims. The days of giving out our wallet addresses or seed phrases to claim airdrops should be over. We need alternatives like encrypted methods (which I learned about at the recent Solana Summit I attended) or the Solana smart wallet with embedded biometrics and 2FA that scammers would find hard to decrypt.

There have been many unfortunate cases where people lost their hard-earned money due to scammers in the Warpcast Universe. The importance of cybersecurity shouldn't be ignored. Educating users about wallet hygiene is crucial, but without enforcement, it's like living in a world where citizens are told to be careful of crimes, but there's no police to catch criminals and put them behind bars. How can citizens feel safe, productive, and efficient in such a world? We need both education and protection to create a secure environment for users.

I hope we can also see some innovation in the Coinbase smart wallet. For instance, if our wallet is drained by scammers or hackers, we should be able to change the seed phrase or perform some form of recovery action to allow us to reuse the wallet. This is important because the on-chain transactions we've performed can be crucial for claiming airdrops or preserving the sentimental and functional value of that wallet.

The expanding Warpcast Universe is vast, and there are simply too many topics to cover in this little Complete Idiot's Guide to Warpcast. However, I hope that what I've shared so far can get you started on exploring the WCU further. Let's grow together in this exciting space!

Useful Resources Section

1) I'm a new account on Farcaster — how do I get discovered? by Dan - https://warpcast.com/dwr.eth/0x13af18d5

2) How to think about Farcaster protocol data? by Dan - https://warpcast.com/dwr.eth/0x2b19242d

3) How to have more control of your home feed? by Dan - https://warpcast.com/dwr.eth/0x3902af7c

4) How to use search better? by Dan - https://warpcast.com/dwr.eth/0x7aaae633

5) Alt clients other than Warpcast on Farcaster - https://warpcast.com/artlu/0x68b0f354

6) Stellabelle’s Farhouse session on Altclients - https://huddle01.s3.amazonaws.com/recording/wgx-orbm-uqo/1719421187698.mp4 (Recommended to download the app for more functions https://warpcast.com/farhouse/0xbaac11e6 )

7) Farcaster User stats - https://farcasteruserstats.com/

8) Farcaster channel directory - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RdeeaGKvqZbY_5YTrP8rqnpW0nmVP_w6lQNBAA0r77g/edit

9) Frame management tool - https://warpcast.com/sha25leo.eth/0x9088562a

10) Translator frame by Undefined - https://warpcast.com/undefined/0xd7817e3a

11) Remind me bot - @remindme in XXX

12) Bookmark organiser - https://warpcast.com/yuki/0xd8388a54

13) How to know if your are being labelled as spam account? - https://warpcast.com/rxs/0x00f75ddd

14) Frame to check how much gas in ETH have you saved on L2 - https://warpcast.com/apex777/0xaad825ec

15) A Farcaster Frame that gets more people Power Badges! -https://warpcast.com/timcox/0xeb6f87b0

16) How to make a come back and get a Power Badge after your old account being nerfed within 2 weeks! - https://warpcast.com/rxs/0x45e7a379

17) To Have or Not to Have the Power Badge - https://warpcast.com/ryya/0x0e98fa81

18) Power Badge Bible - https://warpcast.com/hellno.eth/0xd3bb4e5e

19) From Nobody to Warpcast Power User in 21 Days or Less - https://warpcast.com/cryptim.eth/0x94f7b23f

20) Weely Build Reward - https://warpcast.com/base/0xdba5644b

21) 5,000 USDC bounty for OᑎᑕᕼᗩIᑎ ᔕᑌᗰᗰEᖇ buildathon - https://warpcast.com/privy/0xe53fa2c6

22) Talent protocol airdrop for Onchain Summer - https://warpcast.com/talent/0x82469027