I've been working full-time in crypto for 7 years now. This has included everything from figuring out how Ethereum worked with no documentation while starting a blockchain analytics startup, getting acquired by Coinbase pre-IPO, participating in the wild shenanigans of DeFi summer and even building a DEX (as an anon).

A few months ago I ended a 4-year chapter at Coinbase to embark on a new adventure. I thought it was a neat checkpoint to document some of my time so far "in the trenches".

I initially dove in head first into the industry in 2017 when I started TokenAnalyst with my cofounder Jai in the heat of the 'ICO' era - a wild era of global crowdfunding (with questionable due dligence) fuelled by ETH. We started out as a blockchain analytics company that mapped out the entirety of Ethereum and all the flows happening on the chain.

Raising our seed round at the pico top of the 2017 bull market, we then had to navigate the idea maze of building out a sustainable business in crypto during the utter drought and industry contraction of the brutal 2018 bear market. The contrast was stark: from the rush of initial traction to the uphill battle of finding product-market fit in a contracting industry. After exploring various directions and expanding the scope of our product, our team was acquired by Coinbase in 2020.

My 4 years at Coinbase was another wild ride through raging bull market (2020 and 2021) and a depraved bear market (2022). When I initially joined CB, the company had 700 employees. Through 2021, as demand ramped up and new product verticals were rolled out, the firm scaled to over 5000. My job effectively went from building analytics product to becoming a part-time recruiter. At one point, I was interviewing five candidates per week.

Then 2022 and the ensuing bear market hit, and Coinbase had to adapt. Multiple rounds of layoffs, leaner processes, tough decisions. A good lesson on corporate resilience. One of my favorite Brian Armstrong quotes from the time: "In crypto, nothing is ever as good as it seems, and nothing is ever as bad as it seems."

A great book for anyone in a high volatility career is “The inner game of tennis”.

In crypto, the outer game is similar to the back and forth of the tennis ball - the spikes and dips of asset prices and the resulting swings between overt ebullience (”we’re so back”) and abject nihlism (”what am I doing with my life”) that plays out across the collective psyche of participants. The inner game in this space, for me, has been a gradually growing level of comfort with the inherent uncertainty and volatility present in all areas of the space.

At its core, a blockchain is just a global shared database. In the early days of TokenAnalyst, we went all in on infrastructure to parse what was happening on-chain, even running 95 full archive ethereum nodes at one point (burning through $50K a month in AWS costs). It felt crucial then, but timing, as they say, is everything.

Substantial, complex on-chain activity in general didn’t kick off until mid-2020 when DeFi took off. We had built a Ferrari for a world still learning to ride bikes. It's a parallel story to the plethora of chains (L1s and L2s) that we have today - tons of roads and highways but not enough cars to ride them.

In crypto (as was true for the web), there’s a good historical record now of product ideas that were built before their time but got traction later when infrastructure + market demand and crypto penetration levels globally was ready for them.

Some examples:

• Augur (prediction markets 2017) -> Polymarket today.

• Steemit (social network with tipping in 2017) → Farcaster (with degen tips today)

So this brings me to what's next. I think as an industry we’re at a turning point:

• High-throughput infrastructure is largely not a blocker

• We have growing, indexed on-chain social graphs

• LLM tooling is continually evolving at breakneck speed

That’s why I’m excited to be building something new. We’re calling her “Gina” (askgina.ai).

The goal with Gina (@askgina.eth on farcaster) is to create the ultimate onchain companion that you can summon directly within your social feed. We're leveraging all of the infrastructure that's out there, along with the latest in LLM tech to make interacting with Gina genuinely spark joy.

We are rolling out Gina in limited beta now. Sign up for the waitlist at askgina.ai today or get in touch if interested.

The average number of channels a Farcaster user casts in is ~8 channels!

While this is a number significantly skewed by the upper spectrum of users (like the @degentokenbase bot which has replied in over 2000 channels), this is still quite large for an average!

Taking a closer look, I took the top 15 channels by follower count, and saw 7 that are "crypto native" and/or related to Farcaster in some way and 8 that are general purpose non-crypto channels. A pretty even mix.

For folks who cast in multiple channels over time, what is the overlap in usage between channels?

A few things jump out. Firstly there are a core 4 channels (/base, /degen, /farcaster and /frames) that have a significantly high level of users who post in several of them. And on the other hand, there are some supremely uncorrelated non-crypto channels like /tabletop (for board gamers) and /front-end with their own sub communities.

If an average user posts in 8 channels, how does it actually break down? Bucketing by the number of channels that users post in shows this distribution:

The cognitive choice of what channel to place a cast in is understandably tough (when the menu of choices is so large) so 2-4 channels being the largest bucket here makes sense. It's akin to an all-you-can-eat menu in a restaurant - you eventually end up choosing the same few dishes over and over out of habitual grooves and comfort.

However, what's interesting is that:

• 21% of users don't post on channels at all (mostly first time casters) and

• Nearly as many (19%) of users are prolific channeloors (casting in 10+ channels)

So which channels are getting the most traction?

As we saw earlier, one way to segment channels is between "crypto-native" ones and more general purpose channels - as clustered on the right hand side of the visual below.

What's been cool to see as an emergent feature of the crypto native channels on Farcaster is that they've organically sprouted highly engaged sub-communities. From large ones like /degen and /nouns to several smaller ones that have sprung up over the past few weeks - /higher, /sendit, and the notorious /ticker - many with a namesake memecoin or NFT collection to rally around.

While it's hard to see general-purpose non-crypto channels like /founders or /frontend coaelsce around a token, it's possible to see a world where every crypto-native channel on the network has some sort of token or on-chain asset associated with it.

This past week saw Reddit IPO at a $7B valuation - 19 years after its founding and millions of users and posts later. For a certain portion of the internet, Reddit is their defacto "front page of the internet" - a central hub for a vast variety of content - including news, discussions, opinions, and entertainment - all sourced and curated by its users. The similarities between Reddit and Farcaster have been well documented.

Compared to the Farcaster topic space, how do subreddits compare?

Apart from r/funny which stands above the rest, you can see the wide range of general purpose topics across the spectrum all with 20M - 30M subscribers - many of whom gained their initial following from users getting auto subscribed to them upon joining Reddit.

Channels on Farcaster were initially described as "decentralized subreddits" when initially launched last year. For folks who get started with Farcaster, the platform as a whole looks and feels like one big cryptocurrency subreddit. However, as the network has grown, what's been interesting is seeing the the growth of new channels in both "crypto native" topics to markedly more general purpose ones.

There are over 100K subreddits and close to 5K channels on Farcaster and there are several topics (like "memes") that have large communities on both.

As Farcaster matures, and the selection of feature-parity clients (not restricted to just Warpcast) grows, it will be interesting to see which path becomes more dominant - a network of specialized, crypto-native sub communities or more generalist channels with wider appeal akin to Reddit.

Channels, including how they're moderated and managed (with channel passes), and the communities that form around them will play a crucial role in shaping the network's future direction and identity. As users continue to tune in and out of different channels, they will collectively determine the types of communities and conversations that define the Farcaster experience.

Crypto has always been a community sport. Communities are what define meaning in this industry - whether it is the meme of Bitcoin being seen as a hard asset or an NFT project being feted as the next big IP to capture minds across the globe after Pokemon and Barbie.

The communities that form around these assets rally around shared schelling points of interest, creating vibrant, albeit transient, ecosystems. As fascinating as these formations are, several often face the inevitable entropy - shifts in interest, dwindling participation, and a loss of vision, eventually fading into echoes of a once-lively "discord/telegram chat I used to know."

The fleeting nature of attention within these groups underscores a significant challenge: sustaining long-term engagement.

How does Farcaster keep people engaged?

What's been interesting with Farcaster, which now stands at 200K+ users, is that even after the hockey stick growth this month off the back of frame frenzy, casts per day and engagement levels have not tailed off dramatically. While crypto is often a succession of financially motivated apps - where users strive after the next 10x or airdrop, Farcaster has had a different 'vibe'.

I dove into the open source cast data to quantify what and who drives this vibe. A few of my favorite farcaster "personas" (with some fun stats along with it) below:

Question Askers

Almost 38% of people who have ever casted, have asked a question on the network. Not just any question but often consistently thoughtful questions. Users are fundamentally interested in what others have to say and invite dialogue. In terms of sheer numbers: there nearly 400K casts with questions in them - around 6% of all casts!

Reply Guys

In the true spirit of the /replyguys, a whopping 64% of all casts on Farcaster are replies. When grouping users into how many times they reply, a large majority seem to fall under the multiple-reply segment (as shown in the chart below) with some extreme replyoors racking up several thousand replies (after just a few weeks of activity).

Long-form lovers

We know that casters are avid book readers. Turns out the network as a whole also appreciates longer form writing in casts too. Looking at the data reveals that cast length significantly correlates with user engagement: longer casts generally receive more likes and recasts. Despite a general character limit of ~320 characters per cast, the data shows us that depth and detail resonate more with the Farcaster audience.

🎩 Tippers

Last week a friend and I decided to hook up to a real-time stream of casts from a Farcaster Hub. We didn't have to have this up and running for too long to realize that much of our screen was filled with $DEGEN.

The most used word on Farcaster by far, $DEGEN and it's dominant use case as a form of tipping currency (where folks can reply to a cast with a number and $DEGEN to tip the person who made the cast) is a massive presence on the network. While projects like Steemit did have features to pay nominal amounts for posts, tipping for social media content isn't something that has been explored at scale and achieved success.

Some high level stats around this phenomenon:

Over 37K users have tipped $DEGEN at some point in time and nearly 16% of all casts have had "$DEGEN" in them.

Builders

Lastly, let's address the gorilla in the room. The launch of Frames and the frame-ification of NFT mints, apps, games, and more has unlocked a ton of creative and fun experiences on the feed both for users and developers. Not only have casts with Frames exploded this year (see below), but Frame casts received nearly 22% of all the likes given out on Farcaster in 2024.

Some takeaways

a) At this stage of its growth, what's kept Farcaster engaging is a core culture of people giving generously - their questions, answers, likes, tips, and ideas. Deeper engagement > shallow engagement.

b) The fact that the underlying protocol and its social graph are open and analyzable is awesome.

I'll likely be diving into more of this data down the line - including the evolving landscape of channels and how niche communities start to coalesce and grow. Feel free to comment here or shoot me a DM on Warpcast with ideas on what to explore next in this fascinating dataset.