I’ve taken some time to go through the series and extracted a few highlights for you.

My top episodes were:

• Episode 3: Humpty and Pichi go through the current drawbacks of how Moxie incentives are designed, incentivizing farming.

• Episode 4: They describe @samantha’s approach to building her creator business on Farcaster by establishing genuine connections with the community and receiving support in return.

Episode 1: Thriving in the New Creator Economy

In this episode, Humpty and Pichi discuss creator tools, contributor rewards, content strategies, and algorithm dynamics.

Key Takeaways

Foot for thought - Web3 implies volatility: Even more than in traditional creator markets, market downturns and price action highly impact engagement on Farcaster, leading to reduced activity.

Tip - Using group chats: One high-leverage tool right now is simply using Warpcast group chats to deepen connections and boost engagement around your content.

Tool - Rounds.wtf: Rounds is a great tool to increase engagement in a given Farcaster channel. Make sure that rules are clear to encourage participation.

Tip - Cross-channel collaborations: Rewarding specific communities through collaborations, like discounts for multi-channel subscribers, can help promote growth.

Tool - Stack.so: Stack.so lets creators set up a point system to retroactively reward community contributions.

Tip - Farcaster algorithm: Balancing content quality and quantity is vital. Older accounts on Farcaster tend to get algorithmic preference. This makes it harder to measure contributions by different community members. Turning off priority mode on Warpcast improves conversation visibility, which can help, but increases spam.

Episode 2: Introducing Fan Tokens for the New Creator Economy with Moxie

Humpty and Pichi discuss the creator economy, focusing on the launch of Moxie within Farcaster, which aims to boost community engagement and creator monetization through fan tokens.

Key Takeaways

Foot for thought - Shifting creator economy: Farcaster is an experiment in putting content on-chain and having the value created flow back to the content creator.

Tool - Moxie protocol: Moxie allocates tokens to Farcaster users based on the engagement they get from reputable members of the network. Moxie launched with an airdrop to 53,000 Farcaster members to ensure widespread participation.

Tool - Moxie fan token: Moxie tokens can be bought to support creators and invest in their success.

Foot for thought - Utility over speculation: Fan tokens should offer utility and community support, not just speculative value.

Episode 3: The Potential Pitfalls of Fan Tokens in the New Creator Economy

In this episode, Humpty and Pichi explore some of the drawbacks of the current Moxie design and fan tokens in general.

Foot for thought - Moxie & speculation: Moxie is perceived as focusing too much on speculation rather than prominently displaying the rewards mechanism for creators.

Foot for thought - Moxie’s UX: It can be hard to navigate the Airstack platform without spending significant time exploring. The learning curve is steep: custodial wallets, frames, Moxie economics, etc.

Foot for thought - Moxie reputation score: Farscores, calculated by Airstack, are a proxy for reputation and influence on Farcaster. They are highly influenced by interactions with high-reputation accounts, which can incentivize spamming.

Tool - Buoy for search: Buoy is an advanced search engine for Farcaster power users and professionals. It helps creators keep track of conversations they want to engage with more effectively.

Foot for thought - Disabling Moxie: Some creators, like @samantha, have expressed a desire to disable Moxie to discourage engagement farming with their content. There’s no follow-up yet, but genuine engagement is seen as something to protect by some creators. The opposite can discourage them from sharing their work.

Episode 4: Creating Seamless Customer Experiences in the New Creator Economy - The Story of Samantha

Cryptosapiens recap available here

Key Takeaways

Foot for thought - How Samantha created her business: Samantha was fed up with her Web2 job and turned her love for candles into a brand called ‘Humankind’. She evolved her technique over time, moving from purchasing low-quality candles to starting her own dual-layered candle business, using technology for distribution and improvement.

Tools - Samantha’s tech stack: Samantha uses Shopify, Klaviyo, Notion, and Hypersub in addition to Farcaster clients, focusing on intuitive tools that fit her workflow while avoiding a complicated tech stack.

Tip - Real-life meetups: She values the Farcaster community for its feedback culture and emphasizes real-life meetups for deeper connections.

Episode 5: The Future of the Attention Economy in Web3 - Meetups and Meetup Tooling

In this episode the hosts discuss meetups both online and IRL.

Key takeways

Tip - Meetups: 'Farcaster Fridays' are IRL meetups that can be valuable for fostering collaboration and building community.

Tool - Tavern vs Farhouse: Tavern is more user-friendly and accessible compared to Farhouse, which requires an app download and invite code. Tavern’s soundboards and closed captioning improve the experience, especially for non-native English speakers and those with hearing impairments.

Tool - Farhouse: Introducing rewards into Farhouse could increase user engagement and interactivity.

Foot for thought - Story Protocol: Story Protocol, with $80 million in funding, aims to help creators protect their intellectual property on a blockchain. Tracking unauthorized IP use, especially with AI, is difficult, highlighting the need for updated IP laws.

Episode 6: With Brennen Peters from Tavern

In this final episode, Humpty and Pichi discuss the evolving creator economy with Brennan from Tavern.

Key Takeaways

Food for thought - About Tavern: Brennan explains that the inspiration for Tavern came from a desire to create a new type of product for public discourse, particularly in the context of decentralized governance.

Tip - Audio spaces to build community: Pichi emphasizes the importance of real human interaction in audio spaces, noting that voice communication fosters trust and connection more quickly than text-based interactions.

Foot for thought - On bots vs human engagement: While bots can be trained to mimic human behavior, humans tend to make more mistakes, making them easier to identify.

Tool - Potential Tavern improvements: In the future, Tavern could further integrate with Farcaster to more dynamically reflect live conversations in channels or on speaker profiles, for example inside Warpcast. Brennan is considering features like giveaways, polling, POAPs, and NFT rewards to enhance user interaction. It could also let creators drop their own tokens to the audience.

Tip - Build in public: Use tools like Tavern to build in public, share your values, and have people adhere and amplify your message.

Thank you for reading!

“Mint and watch on my platform” is the wording Latasha used as she released her song “A Ten” onchain a few weeks ago. She used Bonfire as the web3 site builder to power her release site. The drop was eventually minted 25k+ times.

What’s Bonfire?

Bonfire.xyz started as a place for web3 communities to create pages and let their audiences access gated content. You can think of it as a no-code web3 site builder. If I remember well, at the time, Bonfire was directly competing with Tellie, which no longer seems to exist.

More recently, the Bonfire team decided to double down on the creator vertical, focusing on multimedia content creators like music artists releasing video clips, who tend to not have great options in terms of distribution channels that they can own.

What problem is Bonfire solving?

Like Latashá, most creators do not desire or can’t afford to spend time and money to build a custom end-to-end website that encapsulates the experience they want to create for their audience, especially one that integrates with web3 protocols. Bonfire aims to fill this gap and be the go-to website builder for creators like Latasha, who are increasingly putting their work onchain and monetizing there.

There are two main ways to release work on Bonfire at this point:

• Posts, which are simply a release of an onchain media creation that can be minted right on the Bonfire page, like Latashá’s song release.

• Passes, which are a way to mediate access to content. For example, in the case of the Ethereum film, passes were a way to get access to the documentary early. The post is the video itself, and ticket holders can access it—in that case, the content is driving demand. In other cases, the passes are the product. The kinds of experiences that passes could enable are still an open question and a design space to explore. Rae Isla uses passes to give its community access to “exclusive content, early releases, and unique experiences.” On my end, I’m not a big fan of fully gated experiences. At a time where distribution is the hardest thing to build, it feels odd to me to put additional barriers in the way of content consumption. Now, for certain types of high-quality and aspirational products, that might work better. To Matt’s point during our conversation, onchain provenance and interoperability are good primitives for gating and tailoring experiences specifically to each community member—a clear new design space vs. the Patreons and Substacks of the world.

Bonfire is not designed to address distribution

Bonfire will not help you with distribution. It’s a platform and an experience that makes the most sense if you’re confident that you’ll be able to channel different kinds of audiences to it. So that’s a thing for creators that already have an engaged audience, in my opinion.

For example, it looks like Latasha’s collects came mainly from three sources:

• An existing community of supporters, including big supporters in the Lens community, helping increase activity on the minting contract

• A Layer3 campaign, helping increase activity on the minting contract

• As a result of the large minting activity on “A Ten”’s NFT contract, it was picked up by onchain media curation venues like Onchain Summer on Coinbase Wallet or Daylight.xyz as trending mints

And this distribution and monetization aspect is still the hardest part to figure out, in my opinion.

What’s next for Bonfire?

1. Bonfire is looking to work closely with web2 creators that have an established fanbase that is looking for more access to them or to the community around them

2. Coinbase Smart Wallet will enable a very simple experience that should allow web2 communities to use the product through smooth onboarding

3. Season passes, which are now in beta, will be rolling out to more people soon!

Surreal differentiates itself from other NFT discovery apps with the simplicity of its user interface. Initially, the app allowed users to swipe through their media NFTs and consume them. Later, the team introduced a curated feed of Zora artworks, along with the ability for users to mint what they saw.

What I find interesting about the app is the ease of the NFT creation flow, which is close to the simplicity of web2 UX, aside from the wallet signature process. After five years of using crypto, I find it refreshing to be able to stop overthinking and just follow a minimalistic design.

Besides good UX, I think that the larger part of the value proposition is the quick path to monetizing posts on-chain—simple yet powerful. This value alone will attract more and more creators (if any) to try Surreal and similar apps.

One question that remains for me is: who will the collectors be? Will crypto natives and bots drive most of the collecting, as they did with digital artists in 2021 and are still doing today? Or will creators primarily monetize through their existing communities? I think the former is more likely, at least as long as crypto keeps existing as separate from the rest of the world. Why would someone join and spend money on NFTs if they don’t already own crypto assets? The barriers still hold.

One thing is more certain: creators will support each other by buying each other’s work. And that might be where apps like Surreal can build network effects and some kind of marketplace. A hub for socialization around discovering and showcasing NFTs. I’m still unsure what the ideal app in this space would look like but its pretty packed with competitors.

I’ll keep an eye on the app and keep you updated!

Just a few days ago, 4 creators in the cohort made their first drop out of the two planned over the course of the program. For some, it was their first on-chain creation or their first time posting on web3 social platforms like Farcaster and Lens. A few days in, each of these creations have already been minted more than 9,000 times on Zora and Blueprint creators have amassed hundreds or thousands of followers in just a few days.

The Blueprint accelerator is taking place at an interesting time. The market is down and consolidating, searching for new narratives and pockets of growth. Given the momentum I’m seeing around the creator economy narrative in web3, I expect it to be a significant part of this cycle and one of the main channels that will attract new people to crypto. The reason is simple: $$. The revenue from selling media on-chain is real, and this should be a huge selling point for small and medium-sized creators looking for ways to monetize their work.

Even though the tooling isn’t mature enough—and it might not be for another 1-3 years if you ask me—the abundance of capital in crypto is still a thing. We could see a scenario similar to what played out with digital artists in 2021. A program like Bello is an opportunity for any creator to live off their work in the coming months and as long as this cycle lasts, with the bonus of laying the foundations for a potential longer-term on-chain community.

Currently, Blueprint creators seem to be mostly active on Farcaster (Warpcast), with creators like Naomi Metzger and Jayden Hills, but also on Lens with Blake Finucane. You can find a full list of participants here.

The program is infused with Levy’s experience in creating and marketing on-chain media, as well as building Bello for on-chain marketers and creators, in addition to the insights from many speakers.

So far, drop strategies seem to be relying on platforms like Layer3, Zora, and Pods, but I have yet to uncover the subtleties and deeper secrets of the ‘Blueprint’. One of the significant value adds is the $30k marketing budget made available to creators to promote their two drops—a considerable help, if you ask me. I’m not entirely sure how the drop economics are supposed to work or how creators will create sustainable revenue in the long run. However, one thing I do know is that all creators including myself can learn by studying how Blueprint creators are operating their drops.

I’ll be following the program closely in the coming days and weeks!

Here are a few takeaways from last week that I think are relevant to share.

1. Farcaster adopts a “growing with crypto” strategy

During their introductory talk, Dan and Varun laid out the strategy for Farcaster in the months to come.

The highlight for me is that the team will keep building for ‘crypto natives’.

The plan is to grow inside of crypto, with crypto, and win the category before expanding to other markets.

I think that makes sense at a time where crypto is about to grow a lot again, and where serving non-web3 users is still a nightmare. By the end of this cycle (and next bear?), the strategy can be evolved.

2. ‘Channels’ are where the action happens this cycle

Another point in Dan and Varun’s talk was their intention to double down on Farcaster channels, turn channels into protocols, and invite builders to create customized experiences for communities on top of channels. I am pretty convinced that within a few months, most of crypto’s economic and social activity will happen there. Here is why:

1. Think of channels as the 2024 version of 2021 Discord: the homebase for web3 native communities, but this time around it is web3 native and open for builders to integrate with. They’re a new iteration on DAOs but more accessible and scalable; people gather in channels and hang out around projects, memes, speculative assets… Projects and creators are building a presence in the various channels that matter to them. Note: the [memecoin x channel] combo has been the core of Farcaster’s user acquisition engine.

2. Kiosk (former Mirror team) raising $10M to build a channels client

   1. The former Mirror team handed off the Mirror product to Paragraph. I assume that they felt appealed the sizable opportunity that channels and Farcaster represent vs. a smaller market for Mirror. Kiosk raised $10M to build a client that integrates channels' social activity with web3 assets tightly is a great validation of channels’ momentum.

   2. The experience that they’re aiming for is letting ppl copy-paste any web3 asset in a chat and sharing that with their friends, socializing and trading - all in the same place… Check out their Mirror post and trailer video.

3. Reminder: channels are also a thing in the Lens ecosystem. The Orb team has been prioritizing Clubs in their product which, for example, can now have a shared treasury that captures part of the minting volume in a given club.

3. New token allocation mechanisms seen on Farcaster?

I listened to this recent Bankless episode describing how the current points x airdrop meta was “cooked” and likely needs to change. At the same time on Farcaster, we’re seeing interesting and organic means of distributing tokens emerge as potential alternatives:

1. Social distribution - aka. allowance tipping

   1. Tipping already existed in Discord, but it was brought back to life by the team behind $degen, and it stuck. More and more tokens on Farcaster are currently adopting tipping as a way to go around or complement airdrops. It seems like tipping is particularly good at putting tokens in the hands of many and grow the number of holders which is directly correlated with longer-term success of the token.

   2. Raz, founder of Guild, pointed out on a panel last week that the allowance part of tipping was actually the most interesting part. It is like giving voting power to people that contribute to your project, letting them judge on where to allocate that capital or resource. So far it's always been an ERC-20 token allowance, but it could be something else?

   3. There are still lots of unsolved questions around tipping in the longer run. How do you sustain or replace tipping when token treasuries run out? How do you compensate for the lack of tipping?

2. Voting on grants allocation through tipping

   1. During his talk at Farcon, Degen’s founder Jacek mentioned wanting to let people use their tipping allowance to vote on which projects should receive grants bottom-up, instead of having to allocate them top-down.

3. rounds.wtf is a top-down mechanism to reward community contributions

   1. Rounds has been built by Nouns co-founder, @seneca (on FC), as a simple tool to allocate grants retroactively through Frames. Community members post memes and receive small amounts of ETH at the end of the round, claimable through a frame.

      1. Case Study 1: $Higher has been using Rounds - they’ve distributed all the supply at launch among members. Distributing among people creating content in the channel.

      2. Case study 2: the Boss community is currently running a meme contest and allocating 1ETH to creators through rounds.

4. Direct grants

   1. Syndicate and Degen have partnered on an initiative to fund projects building on Degen L3.

   2. Some Higher team members have manually distributed retroactive grants to reward writing initiatives in their community.

4. Clients and apps that caught my attention

1. Kiosk (mentionned above) - a homebase for communities on top of channels

2. Fabric.xyz - a subscription-based patronage platform for creators, UX is sweet and simple

3. Alfafrens - friendtech meets superfluid subscriptions, I feel that UX on there is pretty smooth. The app uses $degen as base currecny

4. Nook.social - a modular Farcaster client where you can group channels together for easier browsing

5. bracket.game - token enabled betting app

6. Sonata - aggregates music shared on Farcaster - layered with a new economics through tipping

5. Recommendations and opportunities for projects

Disclaimer: I am very biased as I’ve invested a lot of time learning about Farcaster/Lens and building a presence there, chatted with many bullish people last week, and I have invested money in Farcaster related projects.

I don’t know about the future of Farcaster and web3 social beyond this bull cycle, but I expect that a good chunk of the wealth creation, activity, and innovation will happen there in the next 18 months.

For projects I think the following initiatives are worth considering:

• Engaging through personal accounts in most aligned Farcaster communities

• Launching product experiments to serve channels and their communities

• Growing your own channel on Farcaster

Now, on the longer run I expect the hype to come back down by a lot, as we’ve seen time and time again with crypto hype bubbles. Plan your moves accordingly!

We're almost two months into the release of Frames, and although we're still early, the technology is evolving quickly. In this article, I want to create a bit of context around Frames, something that you and I can use to build a better understanding of the space.

To do this let’s cover both the technology and some of things it enables today:

1. What are frames?

2. What’s the technology behind frames?

3. How Farcaster turned Open Graph into a standard for mini-apps

4. Open Frames, extending Frames compatibility to other protocols

1. What are frames? according to their inventors

Frames are a interactive windows embedded in your social media feed

Varun Srinivasan, CTO at Farcaster and Warpcast, explains, “Frames are pictures and buttons that when you click shows you more pictures and buttons. But when you click you know who clicked and you can tap in the social graph to tailor the experience based on data.” - find the full conversation here → into the bytecode x Varun

The frame below is an example of the kind of interaction that’s made available by Frames today:

Frames make third party applications composable with social media apps

David Furlong who had been working on mini-app standard for Farcaster months before Frames were released, explains that “Smart Contracts make backends composable. Frames make frontends composable.” And that “Every smart contract will eventually publish a frame by which it can be interacted with.” Highly recommend checking out the full ETHDenver presentation by @df.

For example this bountycaster frame allows you to browse bounties directly from your Warpcast feed:

Frames create native experiences without having to log into a third party website

In Why Farcaster Frames are important, Antonio Garcia explains that “a Frame opens like a portal to another app, allowing that other app direct access to the user. From the Web 2 perspective, it doesn’t seem much different than the <*iframe*> a website routinely opens to another piece of the Web: the difference is that the shared state of the blockchain makes the embedded experience as native as that of the app itself.”

In the frame below I was able to create and mint an NFT directly to my wallet, without having to log into a third pary app.

Going further: here are 6 ways to better understanding Frames by Jayme Hoffman.

2. What’s the technology behind frames?

Frames were made possible thanks to an extended version of the Open Graph Standard created by Facebook in the 2010s.

The goal of the Open Graph standard was to expand Facebook’s social graph beyond just actions that would be taken on facebook.com. How? By letting other webpages embed pluggins like buttons, activity feeds and comments.

This integration meant that actions taken on external websites could be reflected on Facebook, enriching user profiles with their activities across the web and making the web more social. This was a strategic move by Facebook to increase its reach, collect more data and drastically improve ad targeting using this data.

As part of the Open Graph effort was the Graph API which enabled third party devs to access a lot (way too much?) data about facebook users. A design that, unfortunately, was instrumental in the cambridge analytica scandal.

Over time the usecases for the Open Graph standard expanded beyond simple plugins to enable richer, more diverse content integration across Facebook and other platforms through Open Graph tags.

For example tags allow for uniform content presentation. Social media platforms use OG tags to extract specific information about the content being shared, such as the title (og:title), description (og:description), and image (og:image). This ensures that when a link is shared, it presents a uniform, coherent snippet that includes a preview image, a title, and a brief description, making the content more attractive and informative to potential viewers.

Tags such as og:type help platforms categorize the content (e.g., article, video, product), which can influence how the content is displayed or prioritized in feeds and search results. OG tags feed into recommentation algorithms, helping to surface more relevant content to users based on their interests and previous interactions.

Most social platforms and search engines now use or support Open Graph tags to some extent, making it a de facto standard for social sharing metadata.

3. How Farcaster turned Open Graph into a standard for mini-apps

The whole Frames thing works thanks to a few important additions to Open Graph made by the Farcaster team.

Beyond basic tags for post Titles (og:title), descriptions (og:description) and images (og:images), the Farcaster team has extended the Open Graph (OG) standard by incorporating the functionality to add interactive buttons at the bottom of a Frame's image. These buttons enable users to perform actions directly from the Frame, with these actions being automatically signed by their Farcaster account, thereby authenticating the user's identity and the legitimacy of the action.

This extension of Open Graph has paved the way for a variety of actions and logics within the current Frame specification, including:

• Post actions enable developers to design forms for user input as part of frames and let third party apps return new frames based on this submission. They also allow for the content to update dynamically without having to refresh or reload the page.

For example the Aistrack team has built a an AI assistant that accepts simple data queries and runs them for you right into your social feed.

• post_redirect allows for checkout flows and more complex form submission flows or redirecting users to a success or error page.

• mint allows users to mint NFTs in one click through Frames. At this point in most cases mint fees are subsidized in the backend. Another option is to let users pay for mints using Warps, the internal Warpcast currency.

• tx now allors to create transcation buttons in directly in frames. Some examples of how frames transactions have been used today:

  • Swap memecoins in a Frame

  • Copy transactions executed by your friends

  • Subscribing to your favorite creator right through a social media post

For safety reasons there are guardrails as to what transactions can be executed inside a frame. The Warcapast team maintains a whitelist of domains that are deemed safe to interact with. In addition to this Frame transaction pop ups display a simulation of the transaction before it is exectured.

4. Open Frames, extending Frames compatibility to other protocols

Farcaster has been the first protocol to implement Frames through Warpcast. But there are no reasons for Frames not to become something you'll be able to use all over the internet over the next few years (months?).

The team at Open Frames, who had been at the origins of the Frames idea and specification as early as last year, is currently working to bring Frames to other protocols like XMTP and Lens.

The Open Frames standard is similar to the Farcaster extended version of Open Graph, it has most of the same features but different tags and a client protocol identifier to let different protocols know if they’re supported (or not) by a given frame server.

Several projects have started building Frames on XMTP. These can be used on Converse, the web3 messaging app. You can try opening the following links right in the Converse app to start interacting or playing in chat with your friends:

FrameBoard.com is for sale | HugeDomains

This domain name is available, own it today. Affordable payment options. Fast and professional service.

https://www.hugedomains.com

Farguessr by ds8

Guess the distance and the direction between two random countries

https://farguessr.vercel.app

Rock Paper Scissors

Generated by create next app

https://xmtp-frame-rock-paper-scissors.vercel.app

Developers in the Lens ecosystem are also working on an adjusted Frame specification in collaboration with the Open Frames team. This should compose nicely with Frame's open actions, enabling them to use Frames as their frontend and bypassing the complexities of having to create custom front ends for each open action.

5. some current limits to the current state of Frames

Varun recently polled devs about the limits they currently feel about Frames, some of the drawbacks that felt most interesting to me:

• Lack of dev infra

• Buggy developer experience

• Little to no ways to monetize

• Lack of diversity in media types

That’s it for today. More to come soon! To keep up to date with innovation around frames make sure to check out topframes.xyz and follow /topframes on Warpcast.

1. Memecoin speculation - representing financial capital

2. Product innovation - signifying production capital

The dance between money and product innovation in tech

The dance between production and financial capital is central to 'technological revolutions' as pointed out by economist Carlota Perez in her book on the topic. With the advent of new technologies, entrepreneurs envision new possibilities, supported by investors who provide the necessary resources to bring these visions to life.

A recurring pattern emerges: the creation of a bubble as financial capital overshadows production capital, inflating the value of underdeveloped production assets. This is particularly pronounced when retail investors join en masse, fueled by excitement over new technologies and speculative financial activities.

However, actual product innovation is inherently slower. That is, building tangible technologies cannot keep pace with the speed of speculation or the imagination of what the technology might enable.

Consider the internet bubble, with the NASDAQ index as a case in point. It demonstrates the decoupling of financial and production capital, taking 20 years for NASDAQ to match the heights it reached in the late '90s.

Here is the Dow Jones crash of the 1930s. It took the market 25 years to recover.

Farcaster’s mini technological revolution

This bubble phenomena also happens at all scales and at all times in crypto, multiple times per week or even days. Each cycle finances infrastructure and product experiments, though the bubble dynamics may lessen over time as the market matures and investors recognize the real worth of their investments later on, during the deployment phase of these technologies and products.

Recently, Farcaster's growth was spurred by a combination of factors:

• Product innovation: The introduction of Frame mini-apps opened new avenues for developers and entrepreneurs.

• Financial assets for speculation: Including $DEGEN, $FRAMES, Frame NFTs, and Farcats. Allowing the Farcaster community to ‘align their bank’ with the growth of the network

After a surge in growth and a period of exploring the capabilities of Frame technology, the excitement is recalibrating to align with the reality of Farcaster's development status, despite notable progress.

Its striking to see how the $DEGEN memecoin chart now resembles the chart of a typical crypto bubble.

EDIT March 3rd 2024:

I’m adding two excellent charts illustrating Farcaster’s growth in correlation with $DEGEN.

This one by @sidshekhar shows the number of casts mentioning degens compared to all other casts. Showing that a good chunk of casts on the network are driven by degens.

Even more striking, this chart below by @0xluo.eth shows the correlation between average $degen price and the total number of casts on the Farcaster network. Displaying very high correlation in cast volume and price movements.

Finally this last chart shows that it is the overall number of casts that is driving the $degen price, not solely those containing $degen in them.

The question that remains here is the following: which is the chicken and which is the egg?

The sequence of events that led to FC’s growth

The narrative that Farcaster's daily active user (DAU) growth is solely due to product innovation or speculation misses the mark. In reality, both elements are closely intertwined. A timeline of key events demonstrates how Farcaster's growth was fueled:

• Over 3+ years, the Farcaster team developed the protocol, network, and Warpcast client, gradually building a community.

• In the summer of 2023, Warpcast introduced 'Channels,' akin to sub-reddit features.

• By October 2023, Warpcast launched an off-chain points system and in-game currency called Warps, making them non transferrable and intentionally preventing speculation.

• But soon enough, as memecoins were gaining popularity in the Solana ecosystem, the Farcaster community began to express interest in creating its own memecoins.

• The launch of Rainbow wallet's offchain points system prompted the Farcaster community to launch $points. In just 24 hours $points price action led to the re-engagement on Farcaster of leading Crypto Twitter (CT) figures and influencers.

• A few other memecoins followed including $WOWOW, $SPAM and so on.

• Among various memecoins, $DEGEN emerged with a more robust design and team, becoming the top memecoin on Farcaster.

• On the product side on things, the Mod team's demo of embedded mini-apps inspired the Farcaster team to develop the Frames feature, transforming Warpcast into a platform a potential super app where users would interact with third party apps directly in the Warpcast feed and setting the stage for explosive growth.

• $DEGEN concurrently increased in price as speculators saw it as the top token on Farcaster (Warps being offchain, centralized and non-tradable).

• Price increase attracted more influences, devs, users to try this exciting new Frames feature, take part to the FC euphoria and take a bet on $DEGEN, $FRAME and other speculative assets issued with Frames.

$jacob

@js_horne

Memecoins are markets that measure attention

156

9:00 AM • Feb 7, 2024

As noted by Jacob, memecoins act as a beacon in the crypto noise, drawing attention with their price charts and sparking conversations around projects. Influencers and enthusiasts from Crypto Twitter (CT) and tech circles quickly joined the platform, eager to be part of the trend.

Lastly, according to Spindl’s Frame analytics, about half of the reshared and liked Frames to date are related to memecoins and airdrops. The other half were created by a range of projects like Layer3, Seam, Coinbase, PartyDAO, Perl, Base, Syndicate, as well as by individual developers.

It is not a new thing that financial speculation is a key component of growth in crypto. I feel that given the discussions I saw around Farcaster’s recent growth, the relationship between degens and builders was worth highlighting, and I’ve enjoyed applying Carlota Perez’s research to crypto especially since i first wrote my master thesis on the topic.

In the past few weeks I’ve been learning about web3 identity and the stack of projects that, combined together, may help us solve painful web3 issues like drophunters and sybil attackers, while setting the foundations for a frictionless internet UX where we go from app to app with our social graph and benefit from a highly customized service without ever having to log in / sign off and at the same time preserve data privacy. Even maybe earn some returns on the value we create by doing things online. ㋡

So i did what I know how to do and created a quick mapping of this emerging space. Please keep in mind that projects on this mapping might fit into multiple categories at once.

This article is a more exhaustive coverage of all projects on this mapping. If you want the more entertaining version you can watch (and obviously mint) this video.

https://opensea.io/assets/0xDF884158E5dBcC92f065822c0227517e96f5FeE3/2

Please note that you should do your own research to double check the things that I report in this article. Most often I’ve taken information from the various project’s documentation and websites, sometimes podcasts and articles.

Proof of Personhood

Proof of Personhood is a direct method to combat drop hunters and Sybil attacks. It enables individuals to demonstrate their unique human identity using a verified on-chain identifier. This process helps ensure that each participant in the network is a real person, thereby enhancing the integrity and fairness of the system.

Worldcoin employs biometric technology to identify users, similar to the use of fingerprints in passports. It uniquely identifies individuals by scanning their iris using a specialized device, creating a blockchain identifier called WorldID. However, Worldcoin has faced significant criticism due to privacy concerns surrounding the use of highly sensitive biometric data. A data breach or any security loophole in this context could have severe implications. Additionally, a major challenge for Worldcoin is the operational complexity and the associated costs of scanning the entire global population individually with their specialized hardware.

BrightID also focuses on identifying unique individuals, but it takes a different approach from hardware-based solutions. Instead, it uses a process known as 'social graph-based verification.' This method involves users verifying each other through live video calls (BrightID) and a peer-to-peer rating system (Aura). However, this approach presents its own set of challenges. Building a verification social graph from the ground up is a complex task, and there are privacy concerns, especially since individuals involved in the verification process can identify each other during live calls.

Anima, a project developed by Synaps—a KYC provider for cryptocurrency companies—utilizes facial authentication -facegraph- technology as a biometric mean to generate proof of personhood credentials. It is also possible to use traditional ID proofs like passports to generate these credentials. All proofs of personhood are stored in a personal safe, accessible only using the user's keys.

Absinthe Labs takes a lightweight approach, addressing the Sybil problem with on-chain CAPTCHAs. This method helps protect smart contracts from bot interference. Absinthe Labs' system ensures that each CAPTCHA challenge is unique and directly sent by the account needing to resolve it. Once they’ve completed a challenge once, users can continuously login for a period of time.

In a recent paper discussing proof of personhood, Vitalik Buterin proposed a hybrid approach that combines biometric and social graph-based methods. He suggests initially establishing the network using biometric data and hardware, creating a foundation of trust. Following this, the network can be expanded through social-graph based verification.      

However, resolving the Sybil issue isn't likely to be achieved through a single solution. Instead, the entire identity space is addressing it from various perspectives, employing multiple methods and strategies to effectively tackle the challenge.

Reputation (1): credentials & attestation tools

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Establishing trust in the on-chain world isn't limited to proving one's uniqueness as a human. A more nuanced approach may involve creating an on-chain web of trust, which could emerge from accumulating a record of on-chain credentials linked to an identity. Unlike proof of personhood, these credentials can be issued by various entities and hold different meanings for different people. As our wallets gather a diverse range of credentials, they begin to build a rich tapestry of data. This accumulation enables the formation of identity and reputation systems that more closely mirror the intuitive ways we establish trust in the real world, both as individuals and institutions.

Here are three credential technologies in use today:

1. Attestations: These function as a simple yet effective system where any entity can make a statement about another, sign it, and record it on the blockchain. Attestations are distinct from tokens or NFTs. They are essentially digital signatures on structured data known as Schemas. These Schemas define the data's structure and type, ensuring uniformity and clarity in attestations.

2. Verifiable Credentials (VCs): VCs represent a standardized format for attestations. They are digital claims made and cryptographically signed by one entity about another, verifying their authenticity and integrity. VCs are linked to Digital Identifiers (DIDs), which are unique identifiers managed by the individual or entity they represent. DIDs are recorded on blockchain registries.

3. Soulbound Tokens (SBTs): SBTs are non-transferable, publicly-verifiable digital tokens that signify an entity's credentials. However, there are certain challenges with this model. Presently, there are no established methods for recovering SBTs, and their non-transferable nature could lead to other complications, such as their potential use in spam activities

Let's explore how various projects are utilizing different technologies to enable credentials in users' wallets.

Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) is setting the foundational standards for issuing attestations on the Ethereum blockchain. It's a tool for creating on-chain or off-chain attestations, centered around two primary functions: registering a schema and making attestations. EAS is gaining popularity and is being adopted by projects like Optimism, Coinbase, and Arbitrum as the default attestation service.

Verax is a shared, public attestation registry deployable on EVM chains, Verax is a community-maintained public good. Developed in collaboration with organizations like Clique, Consensys, and Gitcoin, it serves as a framework for attestations, allowing dApps to store and access data.

Clique is creating identity oracles to bring private web2 data onto the blockchain in a trust-minimized manner. This includes personal identity, private financial data, AI results, and more. They utilize a modular oracle stack with Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP), Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), and Multi-Party Computation (MPC) to ensure anonymity, data confidentiality, and integrity. Clique's oracles support the creation of on-chain attestations and off-chain DIDs.

Intuition is a protocol for creating identities and issuing attestations for any digital entity: individuals, organizations, smart contracts and so on... It aims to establish a foundational layer for attestations which could eventually lead to reputation and trust networks, identifying reliable and unreliable actors in the space.

Coinbase Verifications offers a set of on-chain attestations verified by Coinbase, facilitating access to apps and other on-chain benefits. It leverages the Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS), an open-source public good included in the OP Stack."

Rabbithole has developed the Quest Protocol, a system that allows crypto protocols to reward users with credentials and compensation for completing tasks on the blockchain. Using this protocol, projects can incentivize user interactions with their smart contracts by offering ERC20 tokens. They can set specific criteria for these tasks, including the duration, reward amount, and the number of eligible participants. Once users successfully complete a Quest, they gain the ability to mint a 'Receipt' into their wallet. This Receipt not only allows them to claim their rewards in the future but also offers potential additional uses.

POAP, or Proof of Attendance Protocol, is a system that allows for the issuance of NFTs verifying the presence of attendees at specific events defined in terms of time and location. The type of events can be pretty broad and some use POAPs as personal business cards during conferences. These proofs are created as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and can be distributed through various methods like QR codes, claim links, or secret words, making them versatile and accessible.

Layer3, on the other hand, has developed into an interactive platform primarily focused on educational quests. Users are rewarded with NFTs and experience points (XP) as they complete various quests.

Galxe provides the necessary infrastructure to enable community members to curate and contribute to a growing library of digital credentials, further enriching the platform's educational value.

Reputation (2): passports and score generation

Beyond traditional credentials like VCs, attestations, and SBTs, there's a category of projects aimed at leveraging identity data for practical uses, such as generating passports or scores.

Gitcoin Passport provides 'stamps' based on the data in your wallet, such as ENS domains, Snapshot votes, Guild memberships, and web2 accounts. These stamps help in creating a more comprehensive digital identity.

Nomis.cc offers a scoring system for your wallets, based on their activity in various blockchain ecosystems or crypto sectors like DeFi. The scoring criteria include factors like the age of the wallet, average transaction time, and total number of transactions.

Degenscore initially concentrated on evaluating the wallet activities of DeFi enthusiasts, commonly known as 'degens.' It enables users to mint Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) that reflect and highlight their skills and competencies, drawing from both on-chain and off-chain data. Users holding these SBTs, or 'beacons,' can gain access to unique experiences crafted by Degenscore and other collaborative projects. This approach showcases a user's expertise and participation in the DeFi space, creating opportunities based on their proven track record.

0xScore is a more recent project doing a similar job by scoring your wallet and granting achievements based on wallet activity. It is positioned as a reputation and sybil resistance tool. The score is based on various parameters of a wallet's on-chain activity, including transactions, DeFi participation, the wallet’s social capital, etc.

Etherscore is a badge system to reward actions made on the Ethereum blockchain. Web3 users can claim EtherScore badges based on their usage of blockchains and Dapps. Badges are NFTs representing achievements that compose users' on-chain reputation. Badges are curated by the Etherscore DAO through a 1 badge 1 vote mechanism.

Regenscore is a simple reputation scoring for one wallet’s specific actions like participation in governance, donation to public goods funding, and contributing to events or projects mostly in the Ethereum and optimism ecosystem.

Orange protocol is a reputation and trust minting protocol that aggregates data and Web3 reputation models to generate comprehensive reputation proofs in the form of Verifiable Credentials and NFTs. It can be used to objectively calculate and assess the "reputation" for a Decentralized Identifier (DID), and associated wallet addresses. It takes multiple data points from both on-chain and offchain sources. The platform data providers from various onchain ecosystems as well as various model providers to compute reputation in various ways for different usecases.

Karma3 Labs is developing a ranking and reputation infrastructure based on the EigenTrust algorithm. This protocol enables developers to design robust recommendation systems and Sybil-resistant frameworks specifically for web3 social graph protocols. It also allows for the integration of on-chain reputation scoring within various communities. Additionally, developers can leverage this technology to enhance search and discovery functionalities in marketplaces and consumer applications, offering a more tailored and reliable user experience in the web3 space.

Philand allows users to build personalized Web3 worlds, where items reflect their onchain activity, achievements, and social graph. Items can be either bought on the Philand marketplace or earned through the completion of quests and campaigns created with partner projects.

Ampy is developing a digital music passport drawing from both on-chain and off-chain data sources. This dynamic, evolving NFT serves as a comprehensive record of a user's music-related activities, encompassing streaming, album sales, concert attendance, merchandising, social engagement, and newer elements like music NFTs and song shares. Users enhance their passport by engaging with and consuming music, earning points and rewards that improve their rank and the visual appeal of their passport. Data is stored on Ceramic

Receipts.xyz is designed to authenticate and map your peronal accomplishments directly to your wallet, starting with and integration with Strava, the web2 sports and social network app. The process begins by connecting your wallet to Receipts and authenticating your web2 account via OAUTH. This allows Receipts to automatically display your available accomplishments. You then have the option to select which achievements you wish to attest to and bring into your wallet. When an attestation is made by Receipts, the metadata of these accomplishments, drawn from the web2 account, is published to IPFS, making it publicly queryable. These attestations are facilitated using the Ethereum Attestation Service.

Relinkd adopts a similar concept but targets a more consumer-oriented audience with a gamified touch. Their focus is on building a reliable digital identity layer, making the process engaging for users.

Newcoin introduces a novel concept with its 'Proof of Creativity' protocol. It recognizes the value created by individuals on different platforms. By linking your platforms to Newcoin's website, you receive WATT tokens, which can lead to earning NCO tokens. Powering up other creators and inviting new ones can increase your WATT earnings.

Privacy

As we accumulate more on-chain data, the benefits are clear: Sybils are deterred, and we can build trust and reputation online. However, the transparency of crypto poses a challenge to privacy. When we connect our wallets to services, there's a risk of exposing all our wallet information. Advanced AI algorithms could even correlate separate wallets by analyzing transaction behaviors. This total transparency, while beneficial in some aspects, has major drawbacks, especially regarding sensitive information like transaction history, held NFTs, and KYC credentials.

This is where privacy technologies like Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) and Stealth addresses become crucial:

Sismo allows users to consolidate all their on-chain accounts into a data vault and generate one-time ZK proofs using Sismo Connect. This enables users to authenticate into services while maintaining full privacy. Sismo's key feature is its ability to let users leverage their entire on-chain identity without risking exposure of their complete on-chain activities.

Holo enables users to prove various statements without disclosing their identity. This includes compliance requirements, establishing Sybil resistance, and wallet recovery. For instance, a user can prove residency in a specific country, offering a privacy-preserving method for KYC and combating Sybils.

Semaphore operates on a similar principle, emphasizing privacy in identity and transaction verification thanks to ZK proofs.

Polygon ID empowers users to establish trusted and secure interactions between themselves and decentralized applications (dApps), adhering to self-sovereign identity principles and prioritizing privacy. It facilitates connections between trust issuers and verifiers. Users can store claims, such as KYC verifications, in their personal wallets and utilize zero-knowledge proofs for private verification. Polygon ID enables secure, privacy-focused interactions with smart contracts and other identities without disclosing personal data.

Data aggregation and portability

Alongside the capability to maintain data as either fully or partially private, there's also the potential to aggregate all aspects of a user's identity data. This comprehensive data collection can then be selectively shared by the user for purposes such as authentication, authorization, and gaining access to various services or applications.

Disco This decentralized identity platform allows end-users to create their own 'data backpack,' essentially a decentralized identifier (DID), and manage verifiable credentials attached to it through the Disco app. The data is stored on Ceramic, a decentralized data management layer. Users can selectively share their credentials with services or access control systems. Disco is increasingly aiding credential issuers in issuing, tracking, and managing verifiable credentials and is exploring the use of claim links for these credentials.

Rarimo serves as an interoperability layer, enabling the transfer of identity data between different blockchains while preserving privacy. This is achieved through an independent system of oracles and validators. Rarimo also incorporates W3C standards for verifiable credentials and employs Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) technology to ensure secure and private data replication across chains.

UX and onboarding

This category highlights projects aimed at addressing the challenges in onboarding users onto applications. Their focus is on progressively transitioning users to become custodial owners of their assets. This approach is designed to reduce churn and enhance the overall user experience.

Privy is a simple toolkit for progressive user authentication and user management. Privy builds authentication, authorization and data control tooling is currently enabling embedded wallets enabling a gradual onboarding experience. Users can sign in to your app with a crypto wallet, an email address, their phone number, or even a social profile (e.g., Twitter or Discord). If they need to users can access their private key and port their wallet elswhere if they need to.

Dynamic is also working on providing smooth onboarding for dapp users through embedded wallets, from onboarding to authentication and user management through helping builders capture information bout their user during onboarding and creating user profiles.

Lit Protocol is distributed cryptography for encryption, compute, and programmable signing. As a generalizable key management layer, Lit provides developers with a comprehensive toolkit for managing sovereign identities on the open Web, enabling things like Seed-phraseless authentication, decentralized access control. Lit’s Programmable Key Pairs (PKPs) product can be utilized by app developers to build a white-label MPC wallet solution that delivers a more flexible and seamless onboarding experience to their end users.

Sign-In with Ethereum (SIWE) outlines a method for Ethereum accounts to authenticate with off-chain services. This is done by signing a standard message that includes scope, session details, and security features like a nonce. The aim is to offer a self-custodied alternative to centralized identity providers, enhance interoperability for Ethereum-based authentication across various services, and provide wallet vendors with a uniform format for better user experience and consent management. Unlike traditional wallet connections, SIWE enables dApps to remember and utilize users' past interactions for a more personalized experience.

Namespaces

Namespaces are a crucial component of web3 identity, often seen on platforms like Twitter and frequently used during interactions with other web3 identities. They primarily serve as human-readable identifiers, linking to various blockchain addresses. Additionally, namespaces can symbolize a user's affiliation with specific communities, making them both functional and representative in the web3 ecosystem.

ENS simplifies the process of mapping human-readable names like 'alice.eth' to machine-readable identifiers, including Ethereum addresses and other cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and metadata. Unlike the centralized traditional DNS system managed by ICANN, ENS operates on the Ethereum blockchain as a decentralized system and is governed by the ENS DAO.

Unstoppable domains is another, similar namespace provider. It provides a few addtional services like messaging and profiles. It isn’t governed by a DAO.

Everynames helps devs navigate the somewhat fragmented namespace providers landscape (ENS, Lens, Farcaster, and Unstoppable Domains) by allowing them to resolve data from every web3 name service with a single query.

Lens protocol also has its own .lens namespace that is coupled with Lens profile NFTs and since Lens v2 decoupled from Lens handles.

Data & APIs

The data layer forms an essential part of the web3 identity stack. Developers often depend on third-party services to access web3 social data. Ceramic is a well-established player in this space, whereas newer entrants like Neynar, Airstack, and Jomo have begun to emerge over the past year.

Ceramic offers a user data storage solution, powering projects like Disco or Gitcoin Passport. On Ceramic users have decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and cryptographically sign their activity data which is then organized into data ‘streams’ stored on IPFS, accessible by dApps with user authorization.

Neynar provides access to data from the Farcaster social graph through their API. They also provide developers with Farcaster infrastructure like Hubs. It's a key resource for developers building on the Farcaster social graph.

Airstack is a web3 development platform that provides powerful GraphQL APIs for integrating on-chain and off-chain data into any application. With Airstack, you can easily connect your applications to any web3 ecosystem.

Jomo provides developers with the tools to easily access verified self-sovereign user data from various sources, empowering them to create personalized experiences that cater to the user. With Jomo, users can own and manage their own data across the different applications. Their trading activities on an exchange, which wallets did they use, where have they travelled to, what tv series are their favorite, which university did they graduate from, the list goes on and on.

Thank you for reading issue #5 of The Rise of Web3 Social! Feel free to DM me with feedback or inquieries here. And don’t forget to mint the video!

Big thanks to Sismo for sponsoring this series!

Welcome back!!!! to 'The Rise of Web3 Social' series. In today's article, I'll share my findings on the Lens and Farcaster ecosystems.

I’ll analyze the two ecosystems according to a methodology that I introduce in the next section and I’ll share my opinion through the whole piece.

Three components for a successful -web3 social- protocol

I have structured this analysis following the three big components of web3 protocols:

Firstly, the protocol itself.

• This encompasses the protocol’s capabilities and its architecture.

• Success can be measured by the number of builders and creators using the protocol to create things.

• It depends on protocol qualities like: relevance of features, usability, scalability and interoperability provided by the protocol (see issue #2 for the full spectrum). Builders tend to really appreciate for the core team to be responsive to their needs.

Secondly, there is the ecosystem of projects developed using this protocol.

• This is the applications, clients and middleware tools built on top of the protocol.

• Success can be measured by the number of products, communities and creators actively operating on top of the protocol, as well as their quality.

• It depends developer experience, credible neutrality of the protocol, and the availability of resources in the form of capital and talent. Things that really helps builders here is an already existing social graph and a critical mass of content, good developer tools and other builders to collaborate with.

Lastly, the community that fuels this ecosystem.

• This is a network of creators, builders, investors and consumers. Initially, the focus might be on bringing in a developer community but I don’t think there is a right sequence to bootstrap this multi sided ‘market’.

• Success here can be measured in the number and aptitudes of individuals as well as the strength of their relationships, how often they interact, meet IRL, support each other and whether they integrate each other apps where synergies are apparent.

• It depends on the ability of the core team to elaborate and execute a cohesive strategy.

The Lens protocol, apps and community

Lens emerged from the Aave ecosystem and core team, embodying a web3-native culture which takes roots in DeFi.

The protocol - onchain and ‘asset-first’

On the one hand, the Lens protocol was initiatlly designed with all follows and publicatons being recorded onchain in the form of NFTs, forming an onchain social graph.

By having content and profiles tokenized, one could say that Lens is an ‘asset-first’ social media (as coined by the team at Variant Fund). This makes lens social media assets like profiles and content collectable, tradable and composable with the rest of the Ethereum ecosystem. This is playing on properties that are unique to blockchains. For example one could use some valuable piece of content as a collateral for a loan to fund new creations.

Another illustration of the power of being onchain is the MadFinance app that lets brands and influencers do business around sponsored posts without intermediaries and directly onchain. Brands create a bounty for a post they’d like to see, putting the money in an escrow contract. Creators then create a post, sign it and submit it for review by the brand. If the brand is satisfied it can validate the post which will automatically be posted, at the same time the creator is paid.

Given that most activities on Lens are recorded on-chain, there is potential for a clearer and more systematic distribution of value via smart contracts. For example multiple stakeholders in the social media value chain, such as client builders, referrers, promoters, and creators, might receive a share of the fees from an NFT purchase by an end user. In the web2 paradigm value distribution was often opaque, with many stakeholder groups not even compensated for their work.

On top of that the Lens team will soon release LensV2 with concepts like Open Actions and ERC-6551 ProfileNFTs that double down on Lens advantages for composability. Open Actions let builders and creators embed other web3 applications right into the feed of Lens clients like hey.xyz. For instance I could let my followers collect a Lens post in order to gain access to joining a party.app onchain collective all in one social media post. An ERC-6551 ProfileNFT is the direct owners of all data posted through it which could give rise to interesting use cases when coupled with avatars developed by Sonar, a company acquired by the Lens team with the intention to enhance profiles. It can also be moved to another wallet.

However, the advantages mentioned earlier are partly speculations and the prospects of the protocol beyond the release of LensV2 is still TBD. In addition there may be some significant drawbacks to being ‘asset-first’ and very onchain.

It is hard to predict the behaviours that’ll emerge with financialization of all social media assets like our own profiles! Imagine an open market for twitter/x accounts. Imagine having all TikTok posts being collectable and tradable. This may lead to healthy specullation but also to poor behaviors like ephemeral cash grabs and scams. I also feel that even though monetization is a superpower for creators, financialization isn’t the fun most people are looking for on social media.

Moreover, Lens has had some scalability issues in the past with the cost per user being too high. This is the price of being heavily and tokenizing all publications on Polygon. The team has been looking to mitigate this by moving social actions offchain ,starting with publications, to a new Optimistic Layer 3 called Momoka, with the option of tokenizing the publication if necessary. It is an open question for a non-technical person like me whether this design could scale to millions of daily active users, or not.

Last but not least, as explained here by security giga brain @Oops, the current design of ProfileNFTs lets people permissionlessly squat and impersonate handles without any mechanisms in place to administer handles and protect other users from bad actors. Stani actually suggested that Oops should submit a proposal to change this at the protocol level.

A quick word on the current state of Lens protocol governance and revenue model.

Lens Governance: Currently, Lens is testing in a closed setting, and the core team controls everything. They're slowly opening up, letting the community suggest improvements through the Lens Improvement Proposals, guided by an EIP-like governance model.

Funding and business model: Lens has over $17M in funding from firms like IDEO and General Catalyst. How they'll sustain in the future is unclear, but they might adopt a fee model, like Zora and Mirror, taking a cut on value flows somewhere on their platform.

Lens Ecosystem of projects - experimenting with onchain media

Below is a non exhaustive overview of the current ecosystem of applications and tools built on top of Lens.

And usage for different apps and clients according to Zurf.social over the past few months.

The three largest applications in the Lens ecosystem are clients with a social media feed. According to this chart, Hey.xyz (previously Lenster), which is a twitter like client created during a Lens hackathon in March 2022, now has a clear market share dominance. Phaver which raised a $7m funding round recently comes second, closely followed by Orb which recently raised $2.3m.

The experience on Hey and Orb highly resembles Twitter/x besides the ability make posts gated or collectable while Phaver lets people stake on each other’s posts in order to curate them and earn rewards if they happen to have good taste.

Those observations previous to the launch of open actions which will let more sophisticated apps to be embedded in feeds. The deployment of LensV2 could trigger a wave of innovative features and enthusiasm in the Lens ecosystem.

Airstack is positonning as a leading data provider and API for web3 social, Farcaster and Lens included.

The Lens Community - still looking for healthy sources of growth

Today Lens is still in a gated phase and little more than 100k people have been able to grab a Lens handle.

Lens has had some issues with bots that it is actively working on solving through the use of AI, closed beta and potentially other means I’m not aware of. The decrease in the presence of bots on the platform might partly expain the drop in activity over the past months, not 100% sure about that.

From what I’ve seen the Lens team has been focusing its growth efforts on both developers and creators at the same time. This is in order to bootstrap the supply of applications and services as well as the precious content which is the lifeblood of all social platforms.

The content on Lens tends to be mostly created by regular users or web3 creators, we’ll see that is a pretty stark contrast from Farcasters developer heavy community. Some examples of creators are Jessyfries.lens, ChaoticMonk.lens, Grams.lens, thefaketomato.lens.

500 people are part of the Orb App “developer community” tab/channel (a group feature similar to Twitter community). It is only moderately active but probably is the best place to get updates on Lens and ask questions to other developers.

Overall the Lens community is still early and I haven’t observed a solid community flywheel in place yet.

Farcaster: decentralized social made in the Valley

Farcaster was founded in Silicon Valley by Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan who both previously held senior positions at Coinbase.

Protocol Level - pragmatic decentralization

The cultural roots of the founders is reflected in the protocol’s elegant architectural choices and a pragmatic philosophy with regards to decentralization that their CTO calls sufficient decentralization. It states that two users in the farcaster network should always be able to communicate with each other, which implies that

1. they own their identities

2. they can post and read messages from the network in a censorship free way

Let’s see how this is done.

At a high level, user identites are recorded and owned onchain while messages and posts are stored in an offchain network of nodes called Hubs, which allows for faster processing of events and cheaper storage of user data in comparison with a fully onchain solution. In many ways we could say that Lens is course correcting towards a more offchain approach with their new L3, Momoka.

However, Farcaster doesn’t offer new sexy onchain capabilities at the protocol level today (think Lens Open Actions, collects…). Instead the FC team has focused on creating a robust set of more traditional social media features for posting, resharing commenting and so on. Therefore, an open question for me is whether this partly off-chain and conservative design of the protocol will limit FC’s ability to be a good environment for developers to unleash their creativity.

One thing that might mitigate this ‘disadvantage’ is the third party services that are already emerging in the Farcaster ecosystem:

• indexers and data providers like Airstack and Neynar bypassing the need for an onchain social graph

• tools like Mint could compensate for the lack of systematic tokenization of posts

• SDKs like Discove could be the substitute to Open Actions, allowing developers to create mini apps right into Warpcast

One thing is for sure, there are no ways to collect posts, trade profiles and other social assets on Farcaster at this point.

When it comes to developer experience the only thing I can say is I’ve heard good things from builders in the FC community. The simplicity of Farcaster is an advantage in an already complex environment.

FC’s Business model: Users will pay a yearly fee to hubs in order to store their data. This is handled by the storage contract and price depends on supply and demand.

FC’s Governance: “Farcaster embraces rough consensus and running code as its governance model. Changes happen when someone makes a proposal, gets buy-in and ships running code. “

Clients and apps - developers unleashing their creativity

Below is a non exhaustive list of projects built by the Farcaster community.

Warpcast is the main Farcaster client today with 90%+ market share. It is built by the Farcaster team itself and is the most well rounded product in the whole FC ecosystem. The FC team is building the Warpcast client at the same time as the Farcaster protocol, and that they intend leaving the maintenance of the protocol up to the community on the longer term.

One advantage here is that there is one high quality client that everyone can use as the port of entry into the FC community. Another one is that the team can also experiment with new features as they develop the protocol.

On the other hand one major drawback is this might compromise incentive alignment between the core team, also developing the protocol, and other pojects competing for users, especially given that Warpcast has both large market share and early mover advantage. For this reason Warpcast might remain the main character in the Farcaster ecosystem and become a super app, a little bit like back when Twitter had third party apps revolving around it, but stronger.

This thesis can be supported through the categorization of projects in the FC ecosystem in two buckets;

1. Projects that enhance the Warpcast app: A whole range of projects focus on enhancing Warpcast features: Eventscaster for creating events, Searchaster and Findcaster searching posts or people, Launcaster for discovering projects, Discove for embedding min apps in the Warpcast feed, Weponder for creating surveys on Warpcast and so on. Making Warpcast some kind of superapp.

2. Projects that loosely integrate with Farcaster, pulling in a specific type of data: For example Fabric.xyz surfaces Farcaster profiles with a checkmark on its platform. Unlonely posts livestream transcripts as threads on Warpcast. Paragraph has integrated the FC social graph and comments directly on its web3 publishing platform. In this category the founders identify as FC community members and start integrating with Farcaster before they start adding other protocols.

It will be interesting to see which of these categories flourishes in the coming year.

Community Level - slow and cohesive growth before opening up

Note that today is Oct 10th, 2023 and Farcaster is opening to the public. This might bring significant changes to community dynamics.

The Farcaster community is very tight knit. The early community was born during the last crypto crash and was described to me as a group of “smart optimistic builders”. It is dominated by developers and founders, some create content and livestream on unlonely but I haven’t seen any full on creators.

Developers hang out a lot and love to share new experiments with each other. The current ecosystem of apps reflects this, with many one-person passion projects. I’ve been told by developers that the community felt welcoming and that the social incentives truly rewards builders that go ahead and create things.

Until today, Dan Romero has been the primary source of onboarding to Farcaster, user invites have been second. This gradual and manual onboarding has had two upsides which is slowly consolidating community culture and preventing bots from entering the platform, preserving cohesion and quality in terms of conversation and content.

Some members are really engaged and it shows in their follower counts. Most of them have much fewer followers on Twitter. Some of them raised their hands and stepped up as benevolent channel (opt in feeds with various topics) leaders on Farcaster. A few really active users account for most conversation liquidity on the platform.

Now what will happen after Farcaster opens up is an open question. It should face the same issues that Lens has faced regarding bots and spam. And its initial community could also loose the quality of being a trusted and comfortable space.

The research continues…

Thank you for reading!

At this point is clear that Lens and Farcaster are very different by design. While I have more theoretical affinities with the composability and web3ness offered by the Lens protocol, I admire how much the Warpcast team has achieved building a protocol, a client and a community all at the same time with high levels of success so far.

Will LensV2 bring a new wave of innovation to the Lens ecosystem? Will Warpcast keep rising to dominate the Farcaster ecosystem? Let’s check in on these questions in a few months.

I’ll add both FC and Lens projects to the mapping I have first shared in issue #1, and we’ll keep an eye on these two protocols as we explore the identity layer of web3 in issue #5.

Resources

• Lens Dune Dashboard

• Farcaster docs

• Lens V2 developer Steptember dev Call

• Article explaining Farcaster’s approach to identity and data

• Farcaster vs Lens by Daniel Lombraña

• Detailed article on Farcaster By LJW and Cameron Armstrong

• LensV2 docs

• Sufficient Decentralization by Varun

• 

  Dan Romero

  @dwr

  

  If you ask me "who uses Farcaster today?" my simple answer is "people building new things also interested in Ethereum".
  
  So not surprising a question like the one below got 182 founders responding (with no spam).

  

  189

  4:04 PM • Sep 29, 2023

• In issue #1 of this series, I started mapping web3 social projects in a stack.

• In issue #2, I attempted to explain the different builder mindsets when building infrastructure projects and consumer apps

• This month, we will zoom into decentralized social media protocols. We’ll start with non-web3 protocols for context, then we’ll move to web3 native projects like Lens, Farcaster and others.

Big thanks to Julien, Wanshu, Limone, Hadrien for providing timely and helpful feedback.

The rise of decentralized social media - Part 1: The 2010s

TLDR of the different sections. Stick with me!

1. The Birth of Federated Social Networks and the Fediverse - In this part I’ll introduce the federated social network model. It can be thought of as the open source communities’ answer to centralized social media platforms.

2. The Fediverse Consolidates Around The ActivityPub Protocol - Here I’ll show how ActivityPub emerged out of the 2010s as the leading protocol around which softwares are being built.

3. Mastodon - Pros And Cons Of The Fediverse Leader - Finally I’ll touch on Mastodon, the largest ActivityPub implementation out there, mentioning some of its advantages and drawbacks.

1. The Birth of Federated Social Networks and the Fediverse

TLDR: The late 2000s mark the end of blogging as the main social acitivity on the internet. Centralized social companies are gaining momentum, the OSS community responds with a federated social network, the Fediverse is born

Starting in 2008, the digital landscape began to witness the rise of decentralized social media platforms. This was a time when tech giants like Twitter and Facebook were starting to dominate the online social networking space, which had previously been ruled by blogging.

Yet, these centralized platforms, with their proprietary code and tendency to commodify user data for shareholder gains, didn't sit well with many in the open-source software (OSS) and hacker communities. OSS groups yearned for platforms that would give users control over their online presence, enabling them to own their data and their experience.

This call for decentralization led advocates like Evan Prodromou and his team to develop alternatives. Their contribution, GNU Social, aimed to stand as a beacon against centralized platforms. It "helps people in a community, company, or group exchange short status updates, conduct polls, announce events, and engage in other social activities." Conceptually, GNU Social functions like Twitter: users can post and read status updates. However, the difference lies in its decentralized nature. With GNU Social, individuals can run customized versions of the software on their servers and join a wider network.

This approach empowers users to choose and use diverse clients or web interfaces, and importantly, host their data independently, similar to the higher levels of decentralization seen in the email network. Technically inclined individuals can host their own mailboxes, while others might rely on major platforms like Gmail or Outlook. Such networks, characterized by distributed but interconnected nodes, are called "federated networks.”

“Federated networks let users pick a server to sign up with, which gives them access to the entire network spread out across many different servers. This gives users more choices for applications, policies, and community cultures. Email is an example of a federated protocol that everyone on the internet uses. Gmail is a popular email application, but if you use a different provider you can still communicate with anyone with an email address.”— Jay Graber, Decentralized Social Networks, Comparing federated and peer-to-peer protocols, 2020

Operating under the OStatus protocol, GNU Social allows disparate social networks to communicate, forming what is known as a "federation." This model contrasts sharply with centralized networks, such as Twitter, where one entity dictates platform rules and holds all user data. It's also distinct from a pure peer-to-peer system, where every user is a node in the network.

This federated network of social graphs made possible by protocol standards are starting to be called “Fediverse”, for federated universe.

Οὖτις

@20002ist

@IMGoph Fully accessible from my part of the fediverse

3

2:07 PM • May 24, 2012

First public record of mention of the name “fediverse”

2. The Fediverse Consolidates Around The ActivityPub Protocol

TLDR: new protocols emerge to form new federations, this leads to a fragmentation of the ecosystem which eventually converges back and consolidates around the ActivityPub protocol.

The 2010s were a period of experimentation for the federation model and the emerging 'Fediverse'. New federations like Diaspora, a Facebook alternative developed by a team of MIT students, were put out there and were subsequently handed off to their community for further development. We could also mention Zot protocol, which added encryption and private messaging to existing standards.

In this organized chaos, a branch of protocols began to outpace the others. It started with OStatus, evolved into the pump.io protocol, and eventually led to ActivityPub, which is arguably the most widely-used decentralized social protocol at the time of writing. Each iteration aimed to learn from its predecessors to eliminate inefficiencies and facilitate greater interoperability.

You might have heard of ActivityPub when Meta announced its interest in integrating with the protocol or if you have ever explored decentralized alternatives Twitter like Mastodon, the leading app in this space. Other projects, such as Tumblr, Flickr and Medium, have also recently expressed interest in ActivityPub. Let's quickly explore how it works, what contributed to its success, and what its limitations might be. I highly recommend this podcast with Evan Prodromou.

ActivityPub Protocol Standard At a High Level

The protocol capabilities include sharing profiles, posts, photos, videos, comments, replies, reactions, likes, and favorites—essentially all standard social media activities you can find on centralized web2 platforms.

Standards focus on two main areas:

• Standards for data representation: these detail events in a JSON data structure, such as "Alice liked Bob's post."

• Standards for data distribution: these outline the mechanisms for routing activities throughout the network.

The ActivityPub Network

The network consists of a federation of servers that comply with the ActivityPub standard and communicate with each other. A server running ActivityPub is referred to as an "instance."

These instances are most commonly run by hobbyists and can host anywhere from a handful to tens of thousands of users. They handle both usernames and their associated data while interacting with other instances.

Server admins can unilaterally enforce moderation policies and can block other instances from interacting with their users. For example, gab.com, a right-wing extremist website, has its own Mastodon instance but is generally blocked from most of the Fediverse.

A large majority of Fediverse instances comply with ActivityPub standards today.

User Identities And Data

In most cases, user identities and data are tied to the server, meaning that if the server shuts down or a user chooses to migrate to another instance, most of the data and content will be lost.

In some cases though, users can migrate their social graph under a new identity or on a new server. Content is usually not encrypted, and admins may have access to their users' messages.

How ActitivityPub Instances Make Money

Each instance is funded by its own administrator or the community often through donations.

For example Mastodon's development is supported by a Patreon, bringing in about $300k annually. This allows the founder, Eugen Rochko aka Gargron and small team to work on Mastodon mobile apps, instance hosting 700k people and main protocol development.

3. Mastodon - Pros And Cons Of The Fediverse Leader

Mastodon emerges as the leading Fediverse software and largest ActivityPub implementation, with its pros and cons

If ActivityPub has become the main standard towards which projects are converging, Mastodon, created in 2016, incorporated AcitivtyPub in 2017 and is emerging as its primary implementation and ambassador.

Eugen Rochko, the founder and lead developer, has modified Mastodon’s implementation of the standard to suit specific needs and user demand for features. Its appeal has led most software projects to seek compatibility with it. Today, Mastodon supports many clients and web interfaces, but its custom implementation of the protocol is increasingly serving as a core backend that others can build upon.

As shown on the graph above, Mastodon’s growth has accelerated when Elon Musk bought Twitter and introduced paid access to its third-party API in early 2023 besides other abrupt changes causing FUD. As a result, users and teams have flocked to Mastodon and started developing third-party apps compatible with it.

Among the companies that have explored Mastodon are Mozilla with mozilla.social, Medium with me.dm, and Flipboard with Flipboard Social. Users of these services can access instances using their existing logins.

Pros and Cons of Mastodon

Below is a table summing up the Pros and Cons of Mastodon according to Evan Prodromou as of 2023 (podcast link in resources).

It's worth noting that cultural wars, toxicity towards minorities, and moderation issues have sparked significant debates within the Fediverse, as pointed out in this 2023 article by Leonora Tindall. Moderation continues to be a sensitive topic, and concentrating too much power in the hands of server admins may not be the best solution.

Where are non web3 decentralized social media going next?

Over the past decade, the rise of decentralized social media has been a gradual, yet persistent phenomenon. It started as an alternative answer to platforms like Twitter, and over time, multiple experimental platforms took shape based on the federation model. Eventually ActivityPub protocol became the central piece.

Interestingly, many Web 2.0 entities are showing interest in joining the Fediverse. Their participation, however, won't be without challenges. Ensuring interoperability between existing Fediverse platforms and these major companies might be tricky. Furthermore, centralized entities, due to their inherent business models, often find their interests at odds with the principles of decentralization. This misalignment might limit their full adoption of the federated model.

The future trajectory of Mastodon remains uncertain, especially in relation to challenges such as user onboarding, scalability, and content moderation. Even centralized social media networks posessing vast resources grapple with these issues and may never solve them.

Currently, Mastodon a few million users millions, primarily made of tech-savvy individuals from open source and hacker communities, artists, and marginalized groups seeking a more inclusive online space. Yet, many questions remain: How will Mastodon cater to the next hundred million users? How can it monetize effectively at scale, increase its development and feature rollout pace, and compete with the next 'super app'?

In PART 2. - Web3 Native Decentralized Social Media Protocols

Thank you for reading Part 1. DM me here with any remarks.

In Part 2, I'll explore Web3 native social media protocols like Farcaster and Lens. We'll be able to compare the pros and cons of these protocols with their non-Web3 counterparts and hopefully draw some interesting conclusions from this.

BONUS: Comparison table - ActivityPub vs. Nostr vs. AT Protocol (feedback and edits welcome)

If you want to skip my story and learn about Jonny’s Nervous System Mastery course, please go to straight to the third section.

Hitting the Bottom

Thirty full inhales and exhales followed by 60 to 90-second breath holds, three times in a row, and I felt like a new person. I had been in the midst of an anxiety rush right as I woke up, buzzing after a night of poor sleep. I didn't really understand what chemical reactions were taking place in my body and brain as I performed breathwork, but my friend Sinclair, also a web3 builder, had suggested I try Wim Hof breathing to deal with anxiety.

It was October of 2021 and I had just stepped down from my Head of Community role at a fast growing digital art platform after years of grinding my way through studies and jobs. “Whenever I reach this milestone I’ll stop hustling”, I often told myself. But year after year, I would set new goals; business school, VC internship, joining a startup, creating my personal brand, posting more: go, go, go! Until I couldn’t.

For 6 months in a row, I used Wim Hof breath-work, sometimes multiple times a day, in order to bring my nervous system back into a regulated state (p.s: I liked this routine but it might not be suitable for everyone). It had grown more and more dysregulated over years of poor self-care and had reached a point where it was too messed up. Poor sleep, clouded thinking, deteriorating relationships. Life had become harder on every front and my body was gradually failing me. It was very frustrating to see my career and personal life limited by my poor mental and, therefore, overall health.

Looking back, I think that I hit the bottom when I finally accepted that I needed to set health as my number one priority for the foreseeable future. It's funny (and ironic) because I was usually priding myself that I would take no shortcuts in life, but I was simultaneously taking a major shortcut by sacrificing my mental and physical resources to other ends. I was burnt out and came up with a new (although naive and contradictory) narrative saying that I needed to flip things on their head and “build such great health that I could grind as much as I wanted without ever burning out again”.

Meeting with my nervous system for the first time

With some crypto savings set aside, I dedicated the majority of 2022 to reclaiming my health and establishing Twoplus, a mental health community for web3 professionals. I began with breathwork, progressed to meditation, and then delved into yoga nidra, deepening my understanding with each practice. While reading Gabor Mate’s book on ADHD (which I'll add to resources at the end), I came to a realization: mental health can be primarily viewed through the lens of neuroscience - the study of neurons. My beliefs, habits, and emotions are all interconnected within a vast neural network, and the cornerstone to it all is the nervous system.

I was an early listener of Huberman's podcast. The 2021 version of me was instantly captivated from the first few episodes. Viewing mental health through a scientific lens lent it a legitimacy that not only resonated with me but also, I felt, would resonate with people around me. It’s annoying to admit but I felt it reassured to hear The Great Science validate some of the Buddhist and psychology principles I had learned earlier on. I guess its hard to escape the culture you grew up in. As I pen this, Huberman's podcast ranks among the Top 5 in the US. No doubts that it addresses a gigantic gap in mental health education which remains to be filled by creators for so many communities.

One such creator, Jonny Miller, is making significant strides in the mission to make mental health more appealing and mainstream. I came across Jonny and the emerging nervous system mastery community on Twitter last year while we were developing the Twoplus coaching program. Jonny's course and methodology appeared as the thing I wish we had created. It uses the nervous system as the core logic on top of which practice is based. Over a year had passed since my lowest point. Though I'd made considerable headway, I knew I had to keep forging ahead. Jonny's second cohort was on the horizon, and I enrolled last minute.

My experience with the Nervous System Mastery Course

It’s April 10th. Jonny and Ocean, the cohort’s community manager, are kicking off cohort n°3 with approximately 200 learners on the Zoom call. Most attendees seem to be in their early 30s or older and have paid $700-900 to attend the 5-week course. I recognize Amanda Laine and Robbie Bent, co-founders of the Othership breathwork app, which I’ve used and genuinely enjoyed this year. I also know two web3 friends had taken cohort n°1 a few months ago and praise it publicly on the course’s landing page. I didn’t engage in forum introductions too much but the vibe was a great fit for me.

Why are we here

Participants have diverse motivations for joining, but they generally revolve around personal well-being, healing from past traumas, burnouts, or enhancing work performance.

How does NSM help us do that

1. Grasping the nervous system's mechanisms at a very high level focusing on its 3 main branches and their respective functions.

2. Recognizing that our nervous system is accessible, and that its state can be adjusted through practices like breathwork among others.

3. Utilizing this understanding to reshape life patterns, fostering wiser, more intentional choices, largely in terms of emotional regulation and better environment design.

The live sessions emphasize practice and interactivity. Theory absorption occurs between sessions through a blend of Jonny's voice recordings, texts, and illustrations. My weekly time investment averaged 60 minutes plus one or two live sessions. I took part in two optional breathwork sessions, particularly resonating with one by ex Rugby player turned breathwork coach: Jacko David Jackson. While I couldn’t commit to more at that time, participants can delve deeper via optional Q&As, guest sessions, and other NSM-themed discussions or group chats ranging from entrepreneurship to parenting. Some participants drop out the course in the first two weeks but retention is high and the good vibes are still here.

My main takeaways

TLDR is that NSM isn't a silver bullet, nothing is, rather I see it as a very powerful model for understanding myself and my overall health. With a clearer understanding of the three nervous system branches and the linked sensations, I have increased my ability to spot when I’m in ‘sympathetic overdrive’. A state that exacerbates my anxiety and energy burn. And when I need to pull the breaks into to a more balanced and pleasant vagus nerve state. A state that allows me to create and socialize while protecting my energy levels. Most often I regulate using NSDR (aka yoga nidra) but medtation, breathwork, socializing or movement also work depending on context.

Jonny offered routines to systematically engage with one's body throughout the day, invaluable for someone like me who has long been detached from their body and all the uncomfortable feelings happening there. Reconnection takes time and practice. Eventually the goal is to be able to process emotions as they arise, preventing them from getting trapped, thereby avoiding emotional debt to pile up and maximizing energy throughout the day, rest thoughout the night.

The above is just my experience and I skipped part of the content that might be interesting to others, including a session to reflect on how we design our daily environments.

What could be improved in the course?

I wish I'd dedicated more time to explore specific topics and get to know other participants better. While I was active during the course, I didn’t establish any lasting connections. This isn't really a fault of the course itself, which is designed to be interactive, but more about where I chose to focus my time. The silver lining is that the course offers lifetime community access, so I have the opportunity to reconnect whenever I'd like. I’ll be looking to do that in the coming months but I’m not sure how yet.

In conclusion, my journey discovering the magic of the nervous system has been very empowering. It's comforting to see people like Jonny and others building entire communities around topics that are largely unaddressed by a culture sometimes struggling to keep up with a rapidly changing world and technology landscape. I hope that courses like this mark the beginning of a larger trend in health education and disease prevention. The NSM community is a key player in this small niche, and as for me, I plan to apply what I've learned for a long time to come.

You can read more information about the NSM community and course here:

Join Nervous System Mastery

A five-week bootcamp that will equip you with a toolkit to regulate your nervous system, build resilience, reduce stress & feel more aliveness. Over 1000+ students have had their lives transformed by this training.

https://www.nsmastery.com

Other resources I liked

• Unwinding anxiety - on the brain and breaking anxiety loops

• Scattered minds - false assumptions on ADHD and the true causes

• Meditation interventions to rewire the brain - what different types of practices do to your brain

• The mind illuminated - a comprehensive guide to meditation

• Breath - an entertaining book on the importance of breath with some jawdropping facts

• Restoring pana - deeper read on the breath as a pillar of health, mindblowing as well (haven’t finished yet)

• Othership app

• Breathwrk app

• Insight Timer - for meditation timer and yoga nidra guided sessions

• Yoga Nidra (NSDR) by Ally Boothroyd

Today, I'd like to delve deeper and distinguish between the two main categories of projects on this mapping: infrastructure projects and applications and try to understand builder’s choices when it comes to choosing the right degrees of decentralization and value propositions to aligne with their targer user personas.

Infrastructure Vs. applications

Before beginning my research for this series, my initial thought was that web3 social simply referred to "any app leveraging crypto primitives like smart contracts and NFTs to create novel social experiences." This isn't entirely incorrect, but it only captures part of the story.

Through a conversation with Hadrien from Sismo, I encountered a more rigorous, infrastructure-based perspective of what web3 social means. Hadrien posited that a web3 social project must be decentralized, interoperable, had open data and was privacy preserving.

The main difference between Hadrien and I is that he is building at the infrastructure layer when I’m pretty consumer minded. And therefore our respective views reflect some of the differences between mentalities at the infrastructure and app layers.

1. On the one hand infrastructure projects are destined towards builders, tend to have more web3 native value propositions that rely on things like credible neutrality and decentralization.

2. Applications, on the other hand, are designed to be used by a wider range of end-users, have very diverse use cases and may need to be more centralized in the early stages until they find PMF.

A framework to make sense of web3 social projects

In the examples given above there are 3 core elements that differentiate infrastructure and application layer projects. The web3 social triad represents the equilibrium among these three crucial pillars of decentralized projects: user needs, the project's value proposition to meet these needs, and the role of decentralization in this process.

Big thanks to Sammi - COO at t2.world - for helping me elaborate the triad idea. See our conversation in comments here, and find t2’s own triad at the end of this article!

Mint the triad on Zora ~

https://opensea.io/assets/0xDF884158E5dBcC92f065822c0227517e96f5FeE3/1

Persona, web3ness, narrative; quick definitions

Persona → the typical representation of the user or community member a project is targeting. We'll delve deeper into the different personas of web3 social, some of them include creators, collectors, consumers, curators, moderators, and private communities.

Web3ness → the degree of decentralization, openness, interoperability, and privacy of an app or protocol. This is especially important at lower levels of the stack, where the properties that emerge from high 'web3ness' constitute the main value proposition. Below is an illustration of the various degrees of web3ness that may exist. All these properties are interdependent and must be developed in parallel in no specific order.

Narrative → the overarching stories where protocols or apps articulate their value proposition in a way that resonates most with their potential users. Today, these narratives are often based on the technical capabilities of technology at the infrastructure layer and are starting to be much more varied at the app layer.

Analyzing the triad of an infrastructure project

Now, let's see what the triad might look like for infrastructure projects.

TL;DR: developers use protocols and middleware tooling (persona), their holy grail is to be able build web3 social applications permissionlessly on top of existing social graphs with significant usage (narrative). This requires rigorous decentralization from projects (web3ness).

Personas ~ devs and creators who don’t want to get ‘rugged’

Developers are the typical user personas of web3 infrastructure projects. This includes social media protocols like Farcaster, messaging protocols like XMTP, or attestation tools like EAS.

Developers seem to value credible neutrality above all else. It guarantees that they won't be unilaterally shut off from the protocols they're leveraging from one day to the next, as recently happened with Reddit's API. They also value access to as many users and as much user data as possible to build and iterate quickly on their applications and achieve early adoption. Finally, they appreciate great developer experience and interoperability with other ecosystems and tools.

Creators are also the users of protocols, albeit indirectly they’re sometimes considered builders. They utilize the apps, tools and clients created by developers. Creators share, communicate, build audiences and communities, and monetize their work. They too value credible neutrality and censorship resistance, along with the ownership and portability of their social graph.

Web3ness ~ protocols need to prove they won’t shut people off from their protocols

Technically speaking, infrastructure projects aim for a high degree of decentralization or web3ness to satisfy the need for credible decentralization among developers and creators.

To be convincing, a protocol or tool must meet the 'sufficient decentralization' threshold, ensuring that developers can always run their service and users can always access essential features on the network or migrate their data to another client.

“A social network achieves sufficient decentralization if two users can find each other and communicate, even if the rest of the network wants to prevent it. […] Some believe that decentralization requires the entire social network to be on a blockchain. This is unnecessary and even undesirable.” - Varun Srinivasan, Co-foundar @ Farcaster

Today, protocols such as Farcaster and XMTP remain centralized. For instance, the XMTP team currently operates all live XMTP nodes as the community is in the process of testing the upcoming client. Despite rolling out a dozen nodes in its network in Q2 2023, Farcaster still lacks several critical aspects such as privacy, ownership distribution, and governance.

At this point, the credible neutrality of these protocols is ensured by the trust placed in their early teams, as well as confidence in the team’s ability to execute their publicly available roadmaps towards infrastructural and economic decentralization.

XMTP, for example, has a two-year timeline with four different phases covering everything from the deployment of a network of XMTP nodes to the accompanying economic mechanisms. It remains to be seen whether XMTP has any long-term plans to decentralize decision-making as well.

“the trade offs come constantly, and its because we care deeply about decentralziation as a pillar, security as a pillar, privacy as a pillar, as well as how we want to approach the developer community. We want to build this out as a protocol for this to work well. It can’t be a widget or a centralized entity.” Matt Gallagan, XMTP founder - Web3 Talks Podcast

Narratives ~ censorship resistance and permissionlessness

The narratives at the infrastructure level significantly echo the preceding sections, emphasizing permissionlessness and censorship resistance.

Developers should be able to build without constraints and indefinitely, ideally having a say in the governance of the protocol they’re using and promoting. Concurrently, creators and users should control their data and access multiple clients, preventing unilateral bans by bots or centralized moderation teams.

The two primary social media protocols today, Lens and Farcaster, are unique in their positioning. Lens seems to cater more to creators, while Farcaster leans towards being builder-savvy.

Typical triad for a web3 social app

We now turn our attention to the typical triad at the application layer. Here, the types of personas can be much more diverse, and consequently, the narratives and degrees of web3ness are on a broader spectrum.

TL;DR: end-users (persona) are using web3 social apps in order to connect, mint, collect, distribute their creations engage or participate in communities and want a seamless and personalized experience accross clients (narratives). Builders have more flexibility with their approach to decentralization (web3ness).

Personas ~ creators, collectors, curators, consumers, mods

Unlike the infrastructure layers, which focus on builders, the app layer generally caters to end-users, whether they are professionals, hobbyists, or passive consumers.

Creators tend to receive the most attention among all these personas today, primarily because they create the content that fuels social platforms. Without exceptional creators, social products cannot achieve the "content liquidity" (s/o @rafathebuilder) or "conversational liquidity" (s/o @dwr) necessary to attract a critical mass of users. Onboarding creators is at the heart of Lens’ go to market strategy in order to create more usage.

Curators, a subset of creators, provide context online, generating meaning and discussions around the content found on platforms. They already existed in web2, but in web3, they may receive increased rewards for their work and contributions.

Passive consumers absorb content on platforms and within private communities. They purchase creators' work for consumption. They seek entertainment, education, quality content, and creating relationships.

There are more personas at this layer. I started a list of all personas in the appendix at the bottom of the article.

Web3ness ~ more flexibility in the short term

Higher degrees of decentralization become increasingly vital when raising the stakes or the value handled by a protocol. Blockchain technology was initially invented to manage money because trust is crucial when entrusting your entire savings account to someone.

Even though personas like creators, collectors, and curators may value censorship resistance, many users will be willing to compromise on trustlessness for a better user experience until some psychological threshold is reached. This could be having someone in their close network being deplatformed.

Builders must ensure that they strike the right balance of decentralization at the right time, balancing market fit and developing tech that will endure over time and gradually decentralize.

A founder of a web3 social app recently told me they were “currently optimizing for speed rather than decentralization, keeping indexing and data processing private. It doesn’t make sense to start designing networks and dev tools if market fit isn’t confirmed.”

Overall, it's about market fit and finding the right use case. Infrastructure projects understand their mission is to create usable technologies for developers, while applications often have no clue about the use case and therefore need to iterate more quickly to discover novel social experiences, then worry about decentralizing complex infrastructure.

One could assume that on the long run, applications failing to decentralize and open properly will have limited interoperability and isolate themselves from the rest of projects for the better or for the worse. They’ll also face more trust issues.

If decentralization at the infrastructure level is too hard to enable then economic decentralization might help balance this out through shared upside and governance.

Narratives ~ as diverse as the number of possible use cases

Narratives at the app layer tend to abstract away much of the blockchain jargon in favor of 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁…. communicating all the cool things you can do using web3 social products and communities.

They’re also quite diverse. I’ll cover some of them below.

Community growth and engagement (Bonfire, Salsa, Guild, t2 and more)

This is probably the biggest narrative among today’s app layer projects. After all, web3’s most used social app to this day are NFT collections and token gating in order to grow communities.

Many tools are focusing on helping creators and brands tighten the bond with their communities through enabling the aggregation or creation of new communication channels and digital spaces where communities can hang out, keep updated and contribute to projects.

This space is highly dependent on data available at the identity layer of the web3 social stack.

Reclaiming attention (ex: t2.world manifesto)

Current web2 platforms are designed for us to spend as much time as possible scrolling. They're harvesting our time and attention by re-routing our brain's reward circuitry, one of the most significant downsides of web2 platforms.

Web3 has the opportunity to change that through a diversity of clients and experiences enabled by open protocols, new business models that are not ad-based, and by being owners and governors of the platforms and communities we consume from.

Interestingly I feel like people aren’t that sensitive to this narrative. Probably because its about reclaiming something, not acquiring some new thing.

Multiplayer (ex: Pendium, Partybid)

“What are you using blockchain for if not multiplayer stuff” recently said Evin McMullen, founder of Disco.xyz, at a discussion I attended. And makes sense to assume that if web2 was about the creation of individual identities, web3 will be about leveraging these identities to interact in richer ways, including as groups.

Let me cite 1kx’s piece here:

“Tools for multiplayer creation have the power to turn passive consumers into creators by turning arbitrary on-chain interactions into a form of self-expression. These tools also bring artists closer to their audience than ever before by way of tighter pre-production feedback loops and post-release interactions. Blockchains and platform-agnostic standards adds provenance and composability to creative works, enabling communities to sample, remix, and make their mark on culture in ways that were not possible before.” - from the 1kx multiplayer article on Mirror.

Creator monetization and data ownership (ex: Paragraph, Lens apps, Madfi)

Those are web3 social projects focus on helping creators monetize their 100 or 1000 true fans through NFTs, better attribution of revenue streams and brand deals.

Just 4% of creators make a living from their content. Brand deals are the most lucrative sources of income according to MadFi. Web3 social changes that thanks to new means of monetization without platform intermediaries. In this new normal creators should be free to move accross platforms and have multiple options to generate revenue.

Onchain discovery and exploration (ex: Interface, Rainbow, Layer3)

Discovery needs to be effective for individuals to find niche products and communities that align well with their social graphs and preferences. It will likely improve as user identities become more sophisticated and recommendation algorithms diversify.

In this category, we find opinionated block explorers like Interface, as well as growth platforms like Layer3. They position themselves as destinations for end-users to explore content and projects.

Many, many more to come…

These are only a few of the many narratives that exist in web3social apps. We’ll cover more in future issues dedicated to the app layer.

A case study with t2’s triad by Sammi Wei 🧠

Let’s finish with a concrete example. I was lucky enough to get Sammi’s thoughts on t2’s triad and priorities for the next 6 months. I invite you to relate this to the previous section for more depth.

“Personas → 1) writers whom we’re not defining by what they write, but how they write - they’re keen to collaborate with others in every stage of their work - they already use or are curious to learn about leveraging new tech (e.g. web3, AI) to help their writing process, from ideation all the way through monetization - they want to give their audience means to engage beyond “readership”.

1. community facilitators who may or may not be writers themselves, who - can bring together writers with shared interests and values - have the skills and motivation to grow their communities - want to leverage web3 to solve problems for their community.

Web3ness → To best serve these users, here are the web3-ness values we choose to prioritize with conscious sacrifice of others, for the next 6 months:

• Enables novel social experiences through the use of web3 native primitives.

• optimizes for interoperability with other apps and protocols,

Narrative → For the next 6 months, our narrative is “where in-depth conversations take place”.

When we’ve created the best possible tools for our users to create and grow their own communities with quality engagement at the core, then we can tackle the next problems like monetization, censorship resistance, and real, user-owned, portable data. That’s not to say that we’re not designing the fundamentals already with these future goals in mind.”Sammi Wei, COO, t2.world

In upcoming issues

Thanks for reading this article! Here are some of the things you can expect next.

• deep dive into the main web3 social protocols

• exploring the data and identity layer

• dedicated issue on the app layer

• web3 social mapping update!

• a video of web3 social builders!!! if you have talent with video editing please DM me!

Big thanks to Sismo for sponsoring this series <3

For those who haven’t minted the genesis NFT yet~

nft://7777777/0x4CC304f37d9009c91905b52c669CcD5997E82dcF/?showBuying=true&showMeta=true

Sources

• Sufficient decentralization by Varun

• Matt from XMTP on Web3 Talks

• Journey to decentralization from XMTP

• Nir on On The Other Side pod

• 
  

• 1kx Multiplayer article

• Content Liquidity by Rafa

Appendix: Web3 social personas table

These are some of the questions we'll delve into in this series on Web3 social. I’m not technical nor am I an expert on web3 social so I’ll be learning as I write! The first few posts will be dedicated to a rapid overview of things that define ‘web3 social’ including the types of projects, primary personas, dominant narratives, and so forth. Just to make sure that we have a general idea of what we’re looking at.

To kick this off I’ll share the WIP mapping that I’ve been working on in parallel of a database of web3 social projects. I’ll keep updating this mapping as we go with your help!! But first here is some context on why this series exists.𓀤 𓀥 𓀦 𓀧

Mint the series genesis NFT on Zora 👇

https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x4cc304f37d9009c91905b52c669ccd5997e82dcf

The series’ backstory and intentions

After spending all of 2022 working on a mental health project, I returned to focus entirely on Web3, aiming to work with various projects and their communities as a consultant and creator. I was seeking new clients when a good friend introduced me to Hadrien, founder and CEO at Sismo, a Paris based company applying ZK for privacy and user data aggregation.

My best case scenario was to assist Sismo with growth and marketing, but what emerged from conversations was much more exciting. Hadrien proposed sponsor me to write an educational series on web3 social. As someone who loves to investigate, learn, and share what I learn, it was an opportunity I wouldn't have found even if I had tried.

So here I am, diving deep into web3 social, trying to understand concepts and pull the work of many smart builders into digestible pieces.

I’ve already learned from many builders and thinkers and will keep doing so. Some are Nir from Yup, Dan and Varun from Farcaster, Bradley from Lens, Jacob from Zora, Raz & Reka from Guild, Jakub from SGV, Peter and Nich from 1kx, Diana from Rehash, Pol from Converse, Matt from XMTP, Adam from Bello and many more.

Thanks to Limone.eth and David for providing feedback on some of the content. And now back to the mapping.

The State of Web3 Social v0, July 2023

I thought that a good old mapping would be entertaining to start with. The plan is to upgrade and revise this mapping and corresponding database over the next few months as we explore the space in more detail.

Please DM me on Twitter/Lens/Farcaster @albiverse for any comments updates to this mapping.

Let’s quickly describe each category of this State of web3 social (v0).

Protocol layer

Protocols provide developers with essential building blocks (or primitives) for Web3 social applications: posting, commenting, following, messaging, and more. As such, protocols target developers as their end users.

There are multiple properties that make web3 social more appealing to developers than their web2 counterparts:

• Web3 protocols aim for decentralization and ‘credible neutrality’ meaning than no central party will be able to shut off developers from using a web3 tool. This is to be put in parallel with the recent situation with Reddit, where Reddit significantly increased the cost to use its API. As a result, most third-party developers had to shut down their apps.

• Web3 social graphs -the history of transactions and user data- are openly accessible and can be leveraged by developers who do not have to bootstrap their own social graph. Something that is notoriously very hard to do.

• Web3 builders can leverage the body of existing building blocks and open source code, increasing the ease of execution of an idea from zero to an MVP.

The degree of decentralization can fluctuate over time for protocols, as their teams have to make short-to-medium-term trade-offs. Some projects are choosing different approaches, including progressive decentralization or 'sufficient decentralization.' The latter is based on the idea that protocols only need to be decentralized to the extent necessary to fulfill their original value proposition, and that non-essential features don't have to be decentralized.

Web3 social is in its early stages, with key protocols still in the initial phases of development. Some, like Farcaster and Lens, have been partially focusing on building web3 versions of web2 features like posting, commenting, and following. Now the more novel primitives of Web3 - such as minting, collecting, and granting access to services based on NFTs - are being added to this mix. Collectively, these elements will enable new use cases at the app layer.

XMTP is an example of a web3 protocol that solves for the messaging primitive and allowing users to receive message accross different apps directly on their blockchain account through clients like Lenster and Converse.

Identity layer

The identity layer enables for a richer experience of web3 social applications through the creation and aggregation of data under decentralized identifiers owner by directly by users. This includes the creation of a dencentralized identity, name and avatar, profile, txn history, data privacy & selective information sharing and providing access to various digital social spaces.

Some projects at this layer are protocols too but given the breadth of projects working on identity and social data I thought that they deserved their own layer in the stack. I feel like the innovations at the identity layer will deeply shape experiences created at the apps & clients layer.

One of the expectations around Web3 social is that users will control their own data and should be able to have customized experiences across the applications they use even for the first time in their life. To make this happen, builders need identity layer projects to provide rich and diverse date.

POAP is an example of an identity layer project that is being used to enrich user experience in Salsa, a chat application.

Clients & apps layer

Clients & apps are the user facing interfaces and products built on top of web3 social protocols. They leverage the breadth protocols and identities available to elaborate valuable and novel use cases for end users like collectors, creators and regular consumers.

My initial idea was to segment apps according to their focus on different web3 social personas like collectors, curators and creator. I eventually went for a simpler categorization of apps according to their main function. It is sometimes pretty hard to categorize the most out of the box experiences like Stealcam.

An example of web3 social app is PartyBid which enables people to easily purchase things together with crypto through a truly novel experience. The Partybid app leverages the Party protocol.

Key enablers

These are a list of technologies without which protocols, tools and apps would not be able to exist. Some examples are ERC 721/1155/6551 standards around which so many projects are designed.

In this category I also want to include key enablers like the ability to build multiple clients on top of web3 social protocols.

Where are we going next?

I expect this mapping to evolve a lot as I refine my understanding of the space.

Here are some of the topics I’d like to research and write about next:

• how projects at different layers of the stack are approaching decentralization

• who are the main web3 social personas

• what are dominant web3 social narratives

Big thanks to Sismo for supporting this series!

This week I’m introducing two sections to this newsletter:

1. “What do you think?” → short opinion or think piece

2. “TLDR” → news on community building for brands, creators, indies

I’m also testing out Mirror as the new home for my writing (find a 🎁 at the bottom).

Disclaimer: I’m not a health professional. This is the fruit of my personal research and lived experience. I’ll share more resources at the end.

The link between building and the nervous system

Lots of relationships to manage, calls to attend, DMs to catch up, important decisions to make. All that in addition to producing outstanding work in a distracting world. Increasingly we feel like things are “overwhelming”, “stressful” and “draining” our energy. Building can be like this at times.

If you’re a masochist that’s where you want to be, you can stop reading this now. In all other cases understanding your nervous system a little more can help.

Underneath all actions and emotions is a nervous system ⚡ , a network of information highways and command centers (like the brain) which coordinates events in our body.

I used to be clueless about my own nervous system. Today I wouldn’t let my nascent knowledge go for all the airdrops in the world.

Nervous system capacity = most important resource

Nervous system capacity is so important because it sets the bar for how much I can take on in a period of time while being my normal -feeling in control, high quality- self.

Any type of interaction with the world uses up some capacity. Everything has a cost!

For example:

• Answering a DM is in the low range of resource consumption,

• Programming for an hour is medium range,

• Attending a week long conference like ETHDenver is extremely stimulating and taxing.

I’m over capacity If the needed resource isn’t available in my system anymore. That’s when feelings of being overwhelmed start to show up (for me at least). Its fine if I keep pushing in that zone for short periods of time. But as I go I’m depleting more and more resources and creating debt that’ll have to repay (i.e. take much longer to rest). If I keep pushing for too long I’ll throw my system off balance entirely (gm burnout 🤕).

Maintaining NS balance = growing capacity

Instead when we keep our system within its healthy boundaries it can keep functioning optimally and we’re already growing our capacity to take on more!

My current understanding is that this balance depends on what’s commonly known as the two main components of the nervous system:

• Sympathetic NS → Dominant when I am excited, frightened, activated, engaged…

• Parasympathetic NS → Dominant when I am relaxed, digesting, regenerating…

These two are often presented as complementary opposites but they’re tightly integrated and balance out each other in a yin yang fashion ☯.

When my two systems are in balance and working full speed I will ‘rest and digest’ more efficiently and I will face challenges with fresh and vibrant energy the next hour or the next day. Finding optimal balance is already a way to maximize capacity and to increase my readiness.

When I gradually reclaimed my nervous system from long held trauma and poor self-management practices, I thought:

“WOW is there a world where I can get much more done in life while being healthy and rested respect myself and others???”

And the answer is yes, its a possibility for many to understand and grow their NS capacity. There are so many incredible recovery and growth stories out there.

Where to start healing your nervous system and growing capacity?

On your nervous system mastery journey you’ll hear about things like:

• interoception & exteroception

• somatic experiencing

• breathwork

• meditation

• exercising

• diet

• connection

And many other new complex concepts.

So the important part is having some time, good resources and guides. Those creators helped me:

• Jonny Miller and his NSM Course (you can enroll for Spring cohort)

• AwakenWithAlly great insights into nervous system and trauma

• Connie Biesalski for live instagram breathwork

• Huberman’s podast for the muscles and the science

• Grimhood who have an incredible story themselves

• Mastin Kipp for trauma/healing/NS tips

• If you’re hungry for books and podcasts DM me @albiverse

Before we part ways a real world illustration of how this looks like:

kelly wilde miller 🦋

@kellycwilde

In Dec, I announced I was leading a 7-day Women's Leadership Retreat with a $5.5k price tag. In Jan, I woke up from an anxiety attack at 4am.

My body caught up with the spreadsheet. I had to cancel.

The budget & complexity outgrew my nervous system's capacity to hold it...

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10:46 AM • Feb 22, 2023

• Layer3s biggest update so far - the new layer3 quest UX is really good for education. It made me think deeper about quests and their ability to communicate information through noise.

• Guild’s feature payments is being rolled out gradually - with payments community managers are able to set a price on access to different memberships, roles, content, events and so on… this frictionless experience integrated with Guild opens up a wide design space for monetization. Watch the Guild!

• Christina’s piece on UGC 2.0 - straight from the brain of Lens Head of Growth. How web3 might help niche creators, brands and communities monetize and do (more) meaningful work.

• 3 reasons why retention is king for products (and communities?) - people you retain end up 1. paying for your product 2. telling their friends 3. make you grow more in the long run.

• Web3 has ‘Salsa’ building on POAP, Instagram has ‘channels’ - this thread explains how instagram broadcast channels -allowing creators and brands to create private group channels- is comparable to WeChat groups which gave rise to a whole new breed of private channel marketing. Article linked.

• CM360 is live - Crew3’s new educational program for their user community managers has kicked off last week.

• Collab Land announced their token and 3rd Party marketplace - its in the title! You can claim tokens if you own their membership NFT.

Thanks for reading this issue, let’s chat! <3