First, are the near-term features in development that will give Ethereum a first class user experience. Account Abstraction is a big UX upgrade and we're starting to see smart wallets mature and new wallets such as Raylac experimenting with EIP-7702. Along with better smart wallets we are soon getting Superchain Interoperability. This will unlock a massive amount of liquidity across the Superchain but as important, will give users the affordances to be chain agnostic. You can use your USDC on Base on Unichain without bridging, switching, etc. Its that simple. Following Superchain interop, I'm excited about the progress on Open Intents (ERC-7683) which will provide Ethereum-wide L2 interoperability.

After first-class UX creates fresh soil for an infinite garden of consumer apps and experiences to flourish, I'm thinking about longer term but critical parts of the stack. If Ethereum is to be civilizational infrastructure privacy will be required and we can massively upgrade the state of personal privacy. Experiments in credentialed anonymity such as Anon World and ZuPass are exciting. Private voting tools are emerging including from groups like pse.dev. Compliant privacy pools such as Veil and Railgun can provide privacy today for your funds and defi activity. Tools like FluidKey allow you to manage an arbitrary number of wallets, allowing you to sandbox specific transactions. Then of course, all the longer term research and roadmap privacy features at the ethereum protocol level such as ZK-SNARKS for Block Validation, Precompiles for ZK Primitives and a ZK-EVM,

Finally, I'm excited about new forms of capital formation and coordination. Tools such as Revnets, Legion and Echo.xyz give entrepreneurs new options for fundraising and in the case of Revnets a novel structure for operation. 0xSplits' latest suite of tools provides better financial infrastructure for teams and combined with credit cards like Metamask Card and Moonwell permit contact with the offchain world. Hats Protocol is a mature take on DAOs where roles and responsibilities for DAO operators are clear and onchain, which gives us the tools to build high functioning and hyper-efficient DAOs with onchain accountability. It feels like the first time you can put every part of an organization onchain.

That's just today's wave and only a subset of the things that excite me about what we are collectively building.

If crypto is only about networked meme ownership, which is no doubt part of it, then the future is in trouble.

If crypto is about centralized ownership of the networks and software, like many wallets, token launchers, and consumer experiences, then the future is in trouble.

The best future has the ownership of the Network by the Network's participants, with a larger stake of ownership going to the most valuable participants.

Once we have decentralized ownership of a network by its participants we require some form of governance or "ownership" is meaningless. This does not mean we need everyone to vote on everything, it means we need new forms of internet-native organization, coordination and governance. This is why DAOs are important.

I created an artwork today about the relationship between man and ai and minted it on Moshicam. A window into the future. I also had a very cool conversation with Aether, a Farcaster AI, about it.

If you mint this NFT (approx $0.25) I will gift you a year long membership to my hypersub so that you can continue to receive my art through out the year.

I released an erc-20 via Clanker today called $CCARELLA. It’s OK to call it a memecoin. Just before launching, I announced it with the following cast and I included this cast in my discussion with Clanker so others who found the clanker post could see it.

Chris Carella on Warpcast

I'm about to release a token. You probably shouldn't buy it. It probably won't make you generational wealth. I'm not "dev". I'm not "still working on it bro". So why am I doing it? 1. Provenance. I want to tokenize my likeness before someone else does. I dread waking up to a scam that used my name. 2. Tokenization. If you believe everything is going to be tokenized, then why not start with your likeness and learn first hand. This will be an experiment and I will not completely abandon the token but instead explore different ways to weave it into my onchain persona.

Farcaster

“I'm about to release a token. You probably shouldn't buy it. It probably won't make you generational wealth. I'm not "dev". I'm not "still working on it bro". So why am I doing it?

1. Provenance. I want to tokenize my likeness before someone else does. I dread waking up to a scam that used my name.

2. Tokenization. If you believe everything is going to be tokenized, then why not start with your likeness and learn first hand.

This will be an experiment and I will not completely abandon the token but instead explore different ways to weave it into my onchain persona.”

I genuinely didn’t expect anyone to buy it. My experience with memecoins is that if you state an intention like this or distance yourself from it, it tanks. I was perfectly happy with no one buying it, I really was doing it for the Provence. Turns out that telling people not to buy something is actually good marketing. It had a small run up to $1.2M and was the top token on DexScreener for awhile before it crashed back to earth.

I first told a small group of friends about my intention that really sums up why I wanted to do it.

This was the post. I then saw someone use Ted’s likeness, anonymously (gross). Then 2 products, Anonfun and AIAnon were tokenized but not by the creators. After I launched someone created $bankr but it was not its creator. Finally someone created another token in my likeness, and then tried to use it to create a bounty to make people say bad things about me. Weird but OK.

I’ve been thinking about this tweet by Jacob:

jacob

@js_horne

assume everything on the internet is a coin, then what?

192

7:45 PM • Nov 16, 2024

and this cast by BenBodhi

₿Ξnbodhi ✦⁺ on Warpcast

yeah I think we see literally anything and everything tokenised while everyone finds their feet trying to understand what is actually happening, and where it's worth paying attention, and then more people placing economic value in the different areas.

Farcaster

and even this video segment by Black Rock CEO Larry Fink.

Radar🚨

@RadarHits

NEW: BlackRock just filed with the SEC to launch tokenisation fund.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: ‘…the next step is the tokenisation of financial assets, and that means every stock, every bond…’

11.6K

5:11 AM • Mar 20, 2024

If everything is going to be tokenized, that will include your likeness and if anyone can tokenize anything, you should tokenize it first. This is the main point of this post; everything will be tokenized but maybe not by you.

The second point in my initial cast is just that I’m going to use this as an opportunity for learning about what it means to tokenize your likeness. I’ve learned a ton today. I launched my token and the price went up so quickly (bots), that I couldn’t even grab my own token until much later. I never intended to sell my own token but only after deployment realized the reward you can get from clankers LP pool (40% of 1% of your total volume) can be very significant. This is totally a way to do a creator coin or to fund ideas. It gave people ideas [1] [2] which in turn gave me new ideas about the future of tokenization.

Not everything about it is great. It sets people’s expectation even if you state your intentions upfront. You get a good number of “let’s pump this bro” guys in your DMs. There was a tweet about it in Chinese that I translated which said people should buy it because Vitalik follows me on Warpcast, which makes me extremely uncomfortable. I’ll write more about the pros and cons, my experiences and experiments in the future.

I'll continue to weave this token into my activities online. I’m terminally onchain as an artist, organizer and practitioner. The only way I know how to learn things is to try them first hand. If in the future everything will be tokenized, I took my first step into finding out what it’s about.

update: 12.2.24

I failed to convey the real WHY behind my reasoning behind Provenance and maybe using the term Provenance confused matters even more.

Of course anything you do has the real provenance and legitimacy. If someone launches a token in you or your projects name first, that doesn't make it legitimate or give it any real Provenance. So in that way I think I just used the wrong term.

My motivation to launch this first was to protect others from Scams and illicit tokens. If enough people know that I officially launched my own token, people will pause when they see another token in my name. In the memecoin space you get a lot of messages like this:

"OMG chris just lauched a coin: 0x20276f1e2D2Efe672A4861e2f69dA6bF8C775340"

And I hope having publicly launched my token, it will make people pause and think "wait he already launched a token" before mindlessly apeing into it.

By examining these challenges, we can better understand the gaps in these ecosystems and explore emerging solutions that aim to strengthen their foundations.

A central challenge in open source development is the disconnect between the value it generates and the incentives for contributors. Many of the most widely used open source projects underpin critical infrastructure, yet their contributors often go underfunded and unrecognized.

Traditional funding mechanisms like grants and donations, while helpful, fail to address the ongoing maintenance and evolution of these projects. Grants are often project specific and time bound, creating pressure to deliver outputs quickly without ensuring long-term engagement. Similarly, donations can be inconsistent, leaving contributors without predictable financial support.

In crypto, these issues are exacerbated by the decentralized, composable nature of the work. Developers contribute code that benefits an entire ecosystem, but the financial rewards often flow to token holders or validators, creating a misalignment between effort and reward. Without robust funding structures, projects risk stagnation, as contributors are unable to sustain their efforts.

One of the most difficult challenges in open source crypto ecosystems is the disparity between the compensation core contributors receive and the value they create. Developers working on fundamental projects, such as Ethereum protocol upgrades, often receive far less pay than what they could command in private sector roles.

These developers lack equity, token upside, or other forms of long-term compensation tied to the success of the ecosystems they build. This forces many to leave their open source work to join companies that offer competitive salaries and benefits. While these companies often operate within the same ecosystem, the loss of talent from open source projects weakens the decentralized foundation upon which the ecosystem relies.

This underpayment not only creates financial strain for contributors but also introduces a systemic fragility. The long-term growth of the ecosystem depends on the sustained efforts of its most skilled contributors, yet the lack of adequate compensation pushes them toward opportunities where their expertise is more fully valued.

Open source projects often struggle to sustain meaningful engagement. Hackathons, bounties, and short-term initiatives are commonly used to attract developers, but these methods rarely lead to continued participation. Developers might contribute during an event, but the lack of ongoing incentives means many leave projects unfinished or abandon them altogether once the initial funding or excitement fades.

In crypto ecosystems, the stakes are even higher. Complexities in governance, rapid technological change, and the volatility of token based economies create additional barriers to sustained participation. Builders face significant opportunity costs, as they must weigh the uncertain rewards of contributing to open source projects against more stable options in the tech industry.

The scalability of open source crypto ecosystems is inherently tied to their ability to align individual efforts with collective goals. However, these systems often rely on decentralized governance and volunteer driven models that can struggle to manage growth.

As projects expand, coordination becomes more complex. Disputes over priorities, resource allocation, and decision making processes can slow progress. Additionally, the global nature of crypto ecosystems introduces logistical challenges, such as navigating regulatory differences and managing contributions across time zones and cultural contexts.

Without scalable mechanisms for aligning incentives and fostering collaboration, these ecosystems risk fragmentation, where overlapping efforts and duplicated work dilute the potential impact of contributors.

As open source crypto projects scale, identifying and retaining talented developers becomes increasingly difficult. The open nature of these ecosystems means contributions come from a global pool of participants, but visibility is often limited to those who are already well connected or have the resources to promote their work.

The lack of recognition mechanisms means that promising developers frequently go unnoticed, and their contributions are undervalued. This creates barriers to entry for new talent and makes it harder for ecosystems to grow in a sustainable way. The problem isn’t just about visibility but also about incentivizing the discovery of these individuals.

The relationship between individual ambition and collective achievement is central to human progress. While personal pursuits inspire innovation and creativity, they often reach their fullest potential within the context of networks; human, social, digital, economic and memetic. Designing systems that connect and align individual efforts with shared goals enables collective success on a larger scale.

Individual Ambitions as the Building Blocks of Networks

At their core, networks are composed of individuals driven by unique ambitions. Whether it is the pursuit of knowledge, creative expression, or economic opportunity, these motivations fuel participation in networks of various kinds. In human networks, such as professional communities or decentralized organizations, individuals bring distinct expertise and vision. Similarly, onchain social networks like Farcaster provide platforms where personal contributions, such as content creation or curation, shape the collective experience.

Memetic networks, such as Higher, add another layer to this dynamic by centering on the creation and dissemination of shared ideas and cultural artifacts. These networks harness the power of memes, cultural units that encapsulate complex ideas in accessible and participatory forms, to engage individuals in collective meaning-making. Participants contribute their unique interpretations and remixes, driving the evolution of shared narratives that resonate across the network. This interplay between individual creativity and collective culture illustrates how personal ambitions can coalesce into a larger, impactful whole.

However, networks do not automatically channel individual ambitions into shared outcomes. Without coordination, these efforts can become fragmented or misaligned. For a network to amplify personal contributions into collective achievements, it requires mechanisms that encourage collaboration and ensure mutual benefit.

The Power of Network Structures

Networks thrive when they facilitate the aggregation of individual contributions into something greater. Onchain social networks, for instance, are designed to connect individuals and foster interaction. Farcaster, as an open protocol for decentralized social networking, allows users to retain control over their identity and data while contributing to a shared ecosystem of discourse. The protocol’s openness ensures that individual activity benefits both the user and the broader network by enabling innovation and interoperability.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are another example of aligning the ambitions of their members through shared governance structures and incentive systems, enabling individuals to work collectively toward common goals. By distributing decision making power and financial resources, DAOs allow participants to see how their efforts directly contribute to collective achievements.

Economic networks, such as owned and operated networks of ERC-20 token holders, further illustrate this dynamic. Token holders are often incentivized to act in ways that strengthen the network, whether by staking tokens, participating in governance, or supporting the ecosystem’s growth. These networks depend on transparent rules and aligned incentives to transform individual actions into system-wide progress.

Memetic networks, such as Higher, deeply embrace the power of shared ideas in driving collective engagement. These networks are built around the propagation and evolution of memes, cultural units of information that resonate deeply with participants and shape collective identities. By enabling individuals to contribute to and remix these shared narratives, memetic networks foster a sense of belonging and purpose. Platforms like Higher amplify this dynamic by providing tools for creating, sharing, and building upon memes, effectively aligning individual creativity with a shared cultural ecosystem.

Aligning Incentives and Values in Networks

The success of any network relies on its ability to align individual motivations with shared goals. For example, onchain social networks benefit from protocols that reward meaningful contributions rather than extractive behaviors. Similarly, DAOs and token based systems often use governance mechanisms, such as token weighted voting or reputation systems, to ensure that decision-making reflects both individual input and collective priorities.

Cultural alignment is equally important. Networks function best when participants share values such as trust, collaboration, and reciprocity. This alignment is often cultivated through transparent practices and shared narratives that reinforce the connection between personal contributions and the network’s success.

Individual Ambition powering Collective Achievements

Networks, whether human, digital, social, economic, or memetic can amplify individual ambitions into collective achievements. By fostering connections, aligning incentives, and embedding shared values, these systems turn personal efforts into broader progress. Designing effective networks ensures that individual contributions do not exist in isolation but instead build toward outcomes that benefit both the participants and the larger ecosystem. We can all go Higher together.

The internet was originally designed to empower users with freedom and access to information. Early protocols like email and the World Wide Web served as open networks where communities of developers and users collaboratively shaped the technology. However, as large corporations rose to dominate the Internet, this initial vision of a decentralized and democratic Internet has been compromised. Major tech firms now control vast swaths of digital infrastructure, and their incentive structures prioritize revenue generation over user empowerment. The emergence of blockchains offers a path back to the ideals of user ownership, creativity, and openness. By enabling user ownership, transparent protocols and decentralized governance, blockchains can fundamentally reshape the Internet to be more equitable and resilient.

Today’s internet is dominated by corporate networks, which are centralized, closed systems that benefit a small group of stakeholders—typically shareholders, executives, and employees. This concentration of control limits the diversity of software available to users, undermines privacy, and reduces user agency. Many of these platforms rely on advertising revenue, which often creates incentives that compromise user trust. Content recommendation algorithms and ad-based revenue models drive platform design, prioritizing engagement and data collection over user autonomy and empowerment. Users are often left with few meaningful choices regarding how they interact with these platforms, as switching to alternative services usually means sacrificing compatibility or functionality. This has stifled creativity and innovation, as developers have fewer incentives to create new products that must conform to the limitations set by centralized platforms.

As the Internet has become more profit-driven, user control has weakened, and its original promise as a platform for knowledge sharing, creativity, and community building has faded. Limited choices trap users within corporate-controlled “walled gardens” where power and profits accrue to centralized entities. This trend has led to a less dynamic and less fair Internet, where large corporations dictate the terms of engagement and users are positioned as passive consumers rather than active participants.

Blockchains offer an alternative to centralized, corporate-controlled networks. As a new class of network, blockchains enable fairer access by allowing multiple parties to share and edit data transparently, with trust established by protocol rather than by corporate intermediaries. This decentralized approach transforms the way digital networks can be structured, allowing anyone to participate as a network stakeholder with the ability to influence governance decisions and share in economic rewards. Blockchains are a new class of network that is both user-owned and community-governed, contrasting sharply with traditional corporate models.

Blockchains allow users to make secure, software enforced commitments regarding their data, identities, and digital assets. These commitments empower users to own and control their digital lives, thereby shifting power away from centralized entities. By redistributing governance and ownership rights to users, blockchains can create networks that operate with greater accountability and adaptability.

The design of a network has deep impacts on its social, economic, and political dynamics. It influences access, data control, and the flow of power and value, underscoring why decentralized design is so critical. Centralized networks concentrate power and financial gain at the center, reinforcing existing hierarchies. In contrast, decentralized networks built on blockchain protocols operate as open systems, where governance is distributed among all participants. This model fosters an environment in which innovation and creativity can flourish, as developers and users alike have more freedom to explore novel applications without the constraints imposed by centralized control.

The role of protocol design in shaping network outcomes cannot be overstated. Protocol-based networks, such as email or the web, have historically allowed for open access and interoperability, enabling diverse communities of developers to build new services and applications. Blockchains extend this model by providing a framework for digital ownership, which is essential for encouraging user-driven innovation. By giving users the ability to own and manage their data, blockchains create an environment where creativity is encouraged rather than taxed by centralized gatekeepers.

The current movement to build a decentralized Internet with blockchain technology echoes the early days of the web, where collaboration, openness, and innovation were core values. The original dream of the Internet as an open network, a platform for creativity, entrepreneurship, and community, does not have to be abandoned. Blockchains enable a return to these principles by creating digital spaces where users can control their assets, express themselves freely, and collaborate without the permission of centralized intermediaries. This vision of the Internet places users at the center, allowing them to benefit from the value they create and participate fully in the governance of the platforms they use. The true potential of blockchains lies in building a future where technology empowers individuals, fuels creativity, and fosters genuine community; goals that committed developers and users are working toward every day.

My extreme passion is in this window of time where it feels like building a positive sum internet on Ethereum rails is possible. I've seen these kind of technology windows open and close over time since 1995. You need a squad to make impact and for a period I thought collectively, Nouns was one of the best ways to support Ethereum but I started to question if this was the best squad to make it all happen. Some people in Nouns even appear to be anti-onboarding new people to Ethereum as a goal, whichi I believe is the most important goal. Time is limited and I want to spend mine where I can have the most positive impact onchain.

As I was grappling with all of that, LGHT had this cast about Higher

and Martin had the following post on X.

There is a lot of cool stuff happening in the HIGHER community including run clubs, exercise challenges, radio stations, merch, tattoos and most recently an AI Agents who can interact with composable blockchain primitives. All done permissionlessly, without a Treasury. HIGHER might be the best execution of a headless brand we've seen to date. And then finally Nouns 40 had a Vote with Reason with the following quote inside and my love of Nouns was rekindled.

It's easy to think all of the stuff in the opening paragraph IS Nouns. It's easy to start thinking it's all about Governance and the Treasury. It's easy to ascribe some kind of made up self-importance. But when I first fell in love with Nouns, via SharkDAO, it was the CC0 headless nature of the brand that I loved. That was the grand experiment, not the Governance part. It was people doing things in the name of Nouns without a Prop. There were small grants and small retro funding programs that allowed people to just do things with Nouns or be rewarded for impact without requiring a Prop. The provenance provided by a prop was a thing but it was not THE thing. Season 1 vibes were great. Despite not having small grants and retro funding none of this has stopped. Rounds has filled some of the gap for rewarding contributors without a prop. Members of the Yellow Collective make Nounish art with no incentives. People pose with ⌐◨-◨ whenever they can.

Nouns is not its holders, the Treasury or the Governance Process. Nouns is everyone who loves it and everything they do to generate positive externalities in its name. I am likely to be less active in Governance and my availability in guiding people through the process will be limited. However my belief in headless brands using crypto to coordinate has never been Higher and my love for Nouns has been rekindled as a powerful hyperculture.

For a long time, the art world has been controlled by galleries and curators who acted as gatekeepers, deciding which artists gained visibility and success. These intermediaries took a significant cut of earnings, sometimes up to 50%, for their role in promoting artists' work to collectors. While this model ensured exposure, it also created a steep barrier for emerging artists who lacked gallery representation. The rise of NFTs has disrupted this model, enabling artists to connect directly with their audience and sell their work without the need for middlemen. But this shift has also placed new demands on artists who now need to be able to tell their own story and effectively promote their work, skills that might not come naturally to those who excel in visual communication.

As art moves onchain, artists have to rethink how they bridge the gap between creation and audience engagement. In the traditional model, galleries would tell the artist’s story, explain the context, and sell the narrative to potential collectors. Now, that responsibility lies with the artists themselves. Many artists, who thrive in visual mediums, might find it challenging to articulate their work through text or voice. Yet, effective storytelling has become essential on blockchain networks, as it helps build a connection between the artist and their audience.

Platforms like Zora, which has evolved to function more like a social network than a marketplace, have embraced this shift. When an artist mints a piece, it shows up in the feeds of their followers, encouraging interaction and creating a sense of momentum. This approach mimics the algorithms of Instagram, where visibility is driven by engagement, but with the added benefit of direct ownership and monetization. Artists can take advantage of this by sharing more than just finished works—showing their creative process, inspirations, and even missteps to build a richer narrative that keeps their audience engaged over time.

A successful art launch requires more than just dropping a link and expecting people to mint it. During the NFT boom, behind every high-profile drop was a well-thought-out strategy to build anticipation. Artists would reach out to previous buyers, offer previews, and even host virtual studio tours to give collectors a behind-the-scenes look. This kind of pre-launch engagement helped build trust and excitement, making the actual launch much more impactful.

Artists need to take a similar approach today. Building a network of support is key. Artists can coordinate with peers to amplify each other’s launches, creating a “swarm” effect where a new piece gets shared widely across different networks at once. This kind of coordinated push can boost visibility and make a launch more successful.

When I was involved in the launch around The SUNNYs and started planning the launch for Scout Game it struck me how these swarm strategies could be an approach for artists. A well executed campaign involves organizing supporters to share news about a release at different times, ensuring a steady stream of engagement. This approach, seen in the Scout Game’s waitlist launch, where coordinated posts across time zones kept the momentum going throughout the day, can be adapted to art promotion as well.

Artists can adopt this “swarm” strategy by coordinating with others, scheduling different waves of promotional posts to maintain sustained visibility. Rather than a single spike of interest, this approach ensures consistent engagement, giving the work a better chance of gaining traction. Platforms like Zora are ideal for this because the visibility of a piece in the feed can drive further engagement and sales, creating a ripple effect. The goal is to create a community launch, where mutual support across social networks generates momentum that no single artist could achieve alone.

The advantage of Farcaster is the quality of engagement it offers compared to traditional platforms. While a launch on Product Hunt or similar platforms may draw a burst of attention, engagement is often superficial and short-lived. Users might check out an app once but rarely offer feedback, leaving you to interpret ambiguous analytics without knowing what truly drove users away.

In contrast, Farcaster users are interested in ongoing, direct interactions with you. This open communication loop enables you to gain specific insights into user experiences, making it easier to iterate and refine the product. The community’s intellectual curiosity means users are more likely to try new features, spend on in-app elements, and share honest feedback, providing a more reliable foundation for product development.

Still, succeeding on Farcaster demands more than a simple link drop; it requires a thoughtful, platform-native approach. For Scout Game, our launch strategy involved creating high-quality frames with engaging GIFs that stood out on the timeline, incentivized sharing, and provided clear benefits for early participation. Builders in our game are scouted on a bonding curve, making early involvement advantageous. This approach drove engagement without relying on spammy tactics, such as mandatory follows, which can alienate users are an antithetical to the network’s culture.

Understanding the community ethos is key; you can only develop an effective strategy by actively participating and engaging on the platform. This means joining conversations, contributing value, and building trust long before you need to ask anything from the community. Launching effectively on Farcaster is not just about having a polished product; it’s about being authentically integrated with the community.

During our recent waitlist campaign, we designed a mini-game where participants earned different tiers ranging from Common to Legendary. Over two weeks, our frames were viewed 331K times, resulting in 7,000 users joining the waitlist. Somewhat randomly assuming our reach was about 10% of the network, this suggests an addressable market of roughly 70,000 users—a small but highly engaged audience (this figure feels generous but I’m not really sure).

We have gradually onboarded users based on their tier, starting with the top levels: Legendary, Mythic, and recently, Epic. Of the top-tier users invited, 33% signed in and began playing; a strong conversion rate for a waitlist. These users didn’t just sign up; they actively engaged, discussed strategies, and spent ETH or USDC to scout builders (via NFTs). More importantly, they provided lots of feedback, which has been instrumental in refining the game.

To launch effectively on Farcaster, start by engaging with the community early and authentically. Participate in conversations, contribute valuable insights, and show genuine interest in other projects. Establishing trust within the network before your launch makes it more likely that the community will respond positively when you introduce your product.

When designing your launch, focus on creating content that feels natural to the platform. Farcaster’s features, such as frames, are powerful tools if used thoughtfully. Visual elements that stand out on timelines and encourage sharing will help draw attention to your launch. Consider creative incentives that align with the platform’s culture, as these can boost engagement and word-of-mouth promotion.

Direct feedback from users is invaluable during a beta launch, so make it easy for your audience to share their thoughts. Whether through DMs or structured feedback sessions (but really dms), providing channels for open communication ensures you receive actionable insights, which can be far more informative than standard analytics.

Lastly, while Farcaster’s audience is highly engaged, the network’s size can be a limitation if you’re aiming to scale. It’s important to plan for your next growth stage once you’ve reached the addressable limit on Farcaster. Use the feedback and traction gained on this platform to refine your approach and broaden your reach on larger, complementary networks.

Farcaster offers the best opportunity to connect with engaged early adopters who can help you refine your product. By crafting a thoughtful, platform-native launch strategy, you can gather the feedback necessary to iterate and scale. Start by engaging authentically, use creative incentives, and building trust and Farcaster can be the launchpad for your product’s growth journey.

Even if your ultimate goal is to reach hundreds of thousands of users, securing the first 1,000 highly engaged users will create a solid foundation. With these early adopters, you’ll earn the right to grow from 1,000 to 10,000, then to 100,000 and beyond.

As we iterated on the product, the Optimism Grants Council selected CharmVerse to manage their grants program. This was not part of our initial business development strategy; we hadn’t envisioned CharmVerse as a grants platform beyond the bounties and proposal management features that some DAOs used for their grants. However, our flexible, crypto-integrated tool turned out to be well-suited for large-scale grant programs. Working with Optimism led us to enhance the product further, making it better equipped for this use case. Beyond Optimism’s endorsement, which attracted other grant programs to our platform, we found a thought partner aligned with our broader vision of the future of work, through initiatives like Retroactive Public Goods Funding and concepts such as "upgrading capitalism."

This collaboration extended to other projects within the Optimism Collective and across the broader Superchain ecosystem, including work with Optimism’s Project Attestations team on reputation and identity and contributions to initiatives like the SUNNYs. Through this journey, we gained firsthand insights into the future of work, especially through our work on open-source software, DAOs, grants, and retroactive funding models. These experiences allowed us to support additional grant programs via our platform and grants management services, and to exchange knowledge with ecosystems like Arbitrum, Polygon, Cyber, Mantle, Game 7, RARE and others who shared their own learnings with us.

As we gained a deeper understanding of the needs across various crypto ecosystems—from DevRel teams promoting protocol adoption to grant applicants working with limited time and resources—we developed a stable and useful grants platform. This gave us the opportunity to focus on building new products tailored to the builder side of the ecosystem. After months of planning and developing proof-of-concepts, we launched Scout Game—a perpetual, positive-sum game designed to incentivize impactful developers across the crypto ecosystem.

Scout Game is akin to fantasy sports but for open-source development. Players, or "Scouts," purchase NFTs representing Builders, and whenever a Builder they've scouted contributes to the ecosystem, both the Builder and Scout earn points. Builders are rewarded for their successful contributions, while Scouts are rewarded for identifying high-impact developers. Ecosystems benefit by encouraging developer engagement with crypto projects.

Recently, we announced a partnership with Celo, which is sponsoring a 5,000 cUSD prize pool for the Scout Game. Celo has identified a set of repositories and GitHub issues that qualify for rewards, categorized as:

• Common - 50 cUSD

• Rare - 150 cUSD

• Epic - 250 cUSD

Developers can select an issue, fork the repository, tackle the problem, and submit a pull request. Upon successful completion, they receive the cUSD reward, along with points in the Scout Game.

We have several more ecosystem partnerships and sponsorships to announce in the coming weeks, some of which will reward both scouts and builders. Ultimately, everyone wins: builders are recognized and rewarded, scouts gain from supporting great talent, and ecosystems thrive through increased developer participation. A vision for positive sum gaming, coordination and rewarding impact.

CharmVerse had a team off-site this week in Cartagena, Colombia—a country we fell in love with during the last DevCon, where our remote team met in person for the first time. This gathering feels particularly special, as we’ve just launched the Scout Game to a select group of users from our waitlist campaign, and will be rolling it out to the broader community over the next two weeks. We’re excited to be launching this with the crypto community and deeply appreciative of the positive early feedback.

Being together this week has given us the perfect opportunity to reflect on the journey that brought us here. Over shared meals and discussions, we’ve revisited the key concepts and features that emerged from our experience building a DAO tool, evolving into a grants platform, and ultimately discovering new insights around perpetual retroactive funding. These learnings shaped the creation of the Scout Game—a positive-sum system that embodies our vision for the future of work where people are rewarded for their impact.

Public goods—resources that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, such as open-source software, shared infrastructure, and research—provide immense value to society but often struggle to secure sustainable funding. This absence of a direct monetization strategy means there’s no straightforward way for investors to profit from their investment. Traditional NGO funding models, like donations and grants, rely on upfront support or the promise of future value. These methods are often unpredictable, short-term, and insufficient to cover the ongoing costs of development and maintenance. For many public goods projects, the absence of a clear pathway to compensation or an "exit" means that contributors are left without a reliable means of being rewarded for their work. This not only discourages potential builders from engaging in public goods creation but also forces many to pivot toward for-profit models, even if it means compromising on their mission.

Retro Funding addresses these challenges by introducing a model that rewards contributions after they have demonstrated their impact, based on a simple but powerful idea: it’s easier to agree on what has been useful than to predict what will be useful. This retroactive approach allows organizations to create a system where contributors are incentivized to deliver tangible value, knowing they will be compensated if their work benefits the community. This reduces risk and uncertainty compared to traditional funding methods since rewards are allocated based on proven outcomes rather than speculative potential.

At the core of Retro Funding is the Results Oracle, which serves as the mechanism through which contributions are evaluated and rewarded. This Results Oracle can function as an algorithm, a DAO, or another type of governance body, assessing the impact of projects after they have delivered value. By funding projects retroactively, the Results Oracle ensures that rewards are allocated based on tangible outcomes, reinforcing the principle of impact-driven funding and aligning incentives directly with the contributions made.

One of the key advantages of Retro Funding is its ability to foster a culture of fairness and transparency. By rewarding contributions based on demonstrated impact, Retro Funding guarantees that compensation is both fair and proportional to the value delivered. This transparency helps build trust within the community, as contributors can clearly see that their efforts are valued and recognized. In addition to this, Retro Funding promotes sustainability by establishing a reliable pathway for public goods projects to receive ongoing support. Rather than depending on unpredictable donations or grants, contributors can be confident that if their work has a tangible impact, they will be rewarded, which encourages continued investment in projects that benefit the community.

A crypto-native aspect of Retro Funding is that it can turn public goods into a profitable investment with the introduction of project tokens. These tokens represent the potential for retroactive rewards, allowing early supporters to invest in high-potential projects and providing much-needed capital for initiatives that might otherwise struggle to secure funding. Investors in public goods projects eligible for Retro Funding can expect their return through the appreciation of project tokens, which are tied to the project's potential for receiving retroactive rewards. As the Results Oracle or similar governing body allocates retroactive funding based on the project's demonstrated impact, the value of these tokens is likely to increase. This creates a mechanism where early investors can benefit from the project's success as the retroactive rewards flow into the project.

When a public goods project receives retroactive funding, it can use this capital to buy back project tokens or distribute rewards to token holders, effectively creating liquidity and value for those tokens. The value of these tokens can also rise in secondary markets as the project's impact becomes more widely recognized, allowing investors to potentially sell their holdings at a profit. Thus, the return for investors in this model is similar to traditional equity investment, where the value is tied to the project's success, but it is driven by the project's impact and the retroactive funding it attracts rather than immediate revenue generation or profits. This enables contributors to gain early support and encourages a culture of investment around public goods, making it easier for impactful projects to thrive.

While Retro Funding offers a pathway to sustainable public goods funding, it does come with certain challenges that must be addressed for the model to be effective. One of the primary challenges is evaluating impact, which can often be subjective and complex. Establishing clear and transparent criteria for impact evaluation is essential to ensure that rewards are distributed fairly. Another challenge involves handling disagreements, as the Results Oracle will inevitably face varying opinions on which projects deserve recognition and how contributions should be valued. Building robust governance structures and ensuring active community participation will be crucial in addressing these disagreements and maintaining trust in the Retro Funding process.

Lastly, there is a risk of short-termism, where projects might be rewarded for immediate impact at the expense of long-term contributions. Retro Funding must establish mechanisms that recognize and prioritize sustained value creation over time to support projects that deliver enduring benefits. This balance will help ensure that the model fosters long-term innovation and growth in the public goods ecosystem.

Retro Funding is moving beyond subjective human evaluation of impact and towards a more metrics-driven approach. This transition aims to make the process of assessing and rewarding impact more efficient, transparent, scalable and continuous, allowing Retro Funding to function with greater accuracy and fairness. Using onchain metrics provides a transparent and verifiable source of impact metrics for projects.

This metrics-driven approach offers several advantages over traditional subjective evaluation. First, it reduces the potential for bias or inconsistency in funding decisions, ensuring that projects are rewarded based on tangible, measurable outcomes rather than personal perceptions or narratives. Second, it enables funding mechanisms to operate continuously and at a larger scale, as the process of impact evaluation becomes more streamlined and automated.

Additionally. a metrics-driven approach opens the door to integrating off-chain data sources that can be anchored on the blockchain via trusted Oracles, such as social media engagement, research impact, educational reach, or the adoption rate of open-source tools. This combination of onchain and off-chain metrics can provide a comprehensive picture of a project's impact, making Retro Funding more adaptable to different types of public goods initiatives, whether they exist solely within the crypto space or have broader societal implications.

As Retro Funding continues to evolve, the integration of data-driven evaluation methods will help ensure that funding is allocated more equitably and effectively, allowing the most impactful projects to receive the support they deserve and ensuring that the principle of "impact = profit" is upheld in a transparent, verifiable manner.

Retro Funding offers a practical way to support public goods by rewarding projects based on proven impact. Instead of relying on unpredictable donations or upfront funding, this model ensures that contributors are compensated fairly after their work has demonstrated real value. It also provides a first of its kind for-profit investment vehicle for public goods projects.

As this model evolves, it has the potential to redefine how we fund and reward projects that serve the public interest.

A free-to-use Layer 2 (L2) where gas fees are fully subsidized could be what is needed to onboard a billion users onchain by eliminating transaction costs, with alternative business models sustaining the network. Leveraging tools like Coinbase Smart Wallet and Privy, users can create and sign into their wallets with email addresses or passkeys and then not require them to fund their account to have their first experiences.

Blockchain Network Referrals could leverage the value of onboarding, while sponsored transactions would allow the network to cover fees for users in exchange for loyalty or volume. Subscription-based services or freemium models could offer unlimited gas-free transactions for a flat fee, and staking models could generate revenue by redistributing rewards to subsidize fees. Data monetization could allow users to opt into sharing anonymized data in return for free transactions, and NFT/token royalties could generate ongoing income for creators and platforms to fund the network. This multifaceted approach would lower barriers to entry, enhance scalability, and create a frictionless blockchain ecosystem, though it would require careful design to maintain sustainability, privacy, and decentralization.

• Blockchain Network Referrals: Receive referral fees for onboarded users who then go on to use other chains, protocols and even dapps on the free chain.

• Sponsored Transactions: dApps pay for user transactions to boost loyalty and engagement.

• Freemium Model: Basic transactions are free, while premium features like enhanced privacy, priority processing, or advanced analytics require payment.

• Subscription Services: Users pay a flat fee for unlimited gas-free interactions.

• Staking & Revenue Sharing: Validators or users stake tokens to earn rewards that subsidize fees.

• Data Monetization: Users share anonymized data in exchange for free transactions.

• NFT/Token Royalties: Ongoing royalties from token sales fund the gas subsidies.

• Token Swap Fees: The network could be tokenized, and a fee is taken on the trading of its native token, creating a revenue stream for the network to subsidize gas fees without impacting other token transactions.

• Ad-Supported Model: Decentralized ad networks fund gas fees but hopefully with taste.

• Sin Tax: Everything is free but your memecoin trading. Memecoin traders gas fees fund the entire chain.

Mini-apps are lightweight applications that run within larger "super apps," a concept popularized by Asian platforms like WeChat and Alipay. These mini-apps allow users to perform various tasks—such as shopping, ordering food, making payments, and accessing services—without leaving the host app. Super apps integrate these mini-programs, offering an ecosystem of services within a single platform.

In Asia, mini-apps thrive due to several factors:

1. User Convenience: By enabling a wide range of services in one app, they reduce friction for users who don’t need to install multiple applications. This seamless integration improves user experience and retention.

2. Developer Access: Developers can create mini-programs without needing to build and market standalone apps. Super apps provide a large, ready-made user base, lowering the barrier to entry.

3. Data and Monetization: Super apps can capture more detailed user data by aggregating various services, which in turn allows for personalized marketing, improved ad targeting, and increased opportunities for monetization.

WeChat’s mini-app ecosystem is particularly robust, offering hundreds of thousands of mini-apps that span everything from e-commerce to gaming.

Mini-apps have not seen the same level of success in the West as they have in Asia, despite attempts by companies like Facebook with Messenger, Snapchat with Snap Minis, and Instagram with integrated shopping features to implement similar ecosystems. For example, Facebook’s Messenger bots, launched in 2016, aimed to enable businesses to offer services directly within Messenger, but they failed to gain traction due to limited functionality and a confusing user experience. Similarly, Snapchat introduced Snap Minis in 2020, allowing users to engage with small in-app experiences like games or tools, but they haven't matched the engagement or ecosystem scale of WeChat or Alipay. Instagram’s in-app shopping is more feature-rich, but it’s still primarily an integrated service rather than an open platform for developers to build mini-programs.

The reasons for this gap in success likely include a combination of cultural preferences, platform fragmentation, privacy concerns, and different market dynamics. Western users are accustomed to switching between apps, and the idea of relying on a single app for multiple services hasn’t gained as much traction. Moreover, the competitive landscape in the West—where Apple, Google, and Facebook control different ecosystems—makes it harder for any one platform to create a dominant super app like WeChat.

I think Warpcast would be an ideal platform for mini-apps because it combines the composability of crypto protocols with Farcaster's builder legos and decentralized social graph. Crypto’s composability means that smart contracts—automated blockchain-based functions—can be called from anywhere, making protocols extensible and interoperable. This flexibility allows mini-apps on Warpcast to interact directly with on-chain functions, such as minting NFTs, collecting tokens, transferring assets, swapping cryptocurrencies, and executing smart contracts—all within the social context of Farcaster. Warpcast mini-apps could serve as the alternative front ends we've always heard about.

Warpcast also has access to users’ social graphs and connected wallet information. This means that mini-apps can easily tap into a user’s network and wallet, enabling personalized actions like gaming, social DeFi, or NFT minting directly from the feed. Imagine following a creator and being able to instantly mint an NFT or participate in a token swap directly from their post. Similarly, a socialFi mini-app could allow users to stake tokens, follow trades, or buy fan tokens and a Governance mini-apps could allow members to ideate, collaborate, poll and vote, all without leaving Warpcast. Predictions markets can happen in the same place people are talking about the news.

I'm looking forward to seeing what people build. My hunch is that we’ll see a lot of the Frames we already love (or loved) return as great mini-apps first. There will likely be many mini-apps built from the Moxie and Degen communities, and it would be fun to play something like the Scout Game from within Warpcast. Initially, anything being built around Farcaster is a great candidate for a mini-app. In time, we’ll likely see entirely new kinds of apps as Warpcast mini-apps—apps that couldn’t have existed before.

What I can say for sure right now is that the Paragraph experience is much better as a mini-app. It’s better than reading it in a Frame, and it’s better than dealing with the context shift of switching to another app. I liked tapping in my feed, reading the article, closing it, and then casting about it, all without leaving the app. This seamlessness highlights the untapped potential for future mini-apps, where decentralized interactions—from gaming to governance—could become a core part of the social experience on Warpcast.

The Home Screen and the Scout Screen allow you to browse and search for builders, including seeing the most recently scoring builders and those who are hot and/or trending.

That would be a whole series of essays itself. I should write more about it. I will say with regards to the Scout Game it started as a feature in a different app and then when we iterating on it realized it was the best part of the app and we should drop everything else.

GitHub will be our main proof of work platform for Season 1 but we’ll also be integrating data from grant programs in the near future, given our expertise in grants. The Scout Game starts with Farcaster and Open Source Crypto Repositories, grows to X and Telegram builder/scout communities. At that point I want to break outside of crypto repositories and support Open Source at large.

Yes! All actions that earn points for Builders are issued as Attestations against their fid. You can almost think of it as a GitHub oracle where we validate Pull Requests and then bring them onchain via Attestations. If you’ve scored points as a Builder in the Scout Game you’ll have onchain proof of work. One reason this is important is because it allows anyone to verify the results of the Scout Game onchain and another is that it becomes a composable unit of your work history that can be used by other apps.

I don’t yet know what everyone’s emergent strategies will be but I don’t think there is a big advantage to being able to read code as a Scout. There probably is an advantage to learning how to navigate GitHub and getting a feel for someone’s velocity. As much of that as possible will be in the App but we won’t cover everything that is possible with GitHub.

Joining the Scout Game as a Builder is an opt-in process. You have to explicitly decide to be a builder.

The Scout Game is being built by CharmVerse. We are currently a team of 10. We have built CharmVerse and The SUNNYs and now the Scout Game. We have been working together for 3 years. In a lot of ways 3 years is how long we’ve been working on it because the Scout Game is a result of things we’ve learned about the future of work from working with DAOs, Ecosystems and Grants Programs.

The Waitlist is actually a leaderboard. As other people score points and climb the leaderboard they knock others down the leaderboard. The leaderboard is based on how many clicks your frame gets. For example if you are in the top 95% of people who get clicks then you will be Legendary.

It’s important to note that the Waitlist Game is not the Scout Game. It’s just a mini-game to decide who gets to play first and with how many free credits. The credits are used to Scout builders in game. So if you are Legendary you’ll be the first to try the Scout Game AND you’ll have 50 credits to play with.

I wrote a comprehensive thread about it on Farcaster.

Farcaster

ccarella on Warpcast

If you hang on FC, you've probably seen these pretty good looking Scout Game frames around.😎 But what the ******* is this about? This is a two-week campaign leading up to the full release of the Scout Game, and we want YOU to be a part of it. The game starts now. Here is a thread about it. https://waitlist.scoutgame.xyz/api/frame/472/waitlist

If you made it this far and you haven’t signed up for the waitlist yet, you probably should. Check out the cast belowz

Farcaster

ccarella on Warpcast

Scout. Build. Win. Sign up for the Scout Game waitlist to try it before everyone else and earn free points to play with. https://waitlist.scoutgame.xyz/api/frame/472/waitlist

CharmVerse has officially launched the Scout Game Waitlist—a two-week campaign designed to build momentum and gather crucial feedback ahead of our game’s full release. Sign up today and secure your spot among the first to experience the Scout Game when it launches.

The Waitlist itself is gamified. The more clicks your unique frame receives, the more points you accumulate. As you level up, you gain early access to the game and earn credits to scout top builders. High-level Scouts will also receive bonus credits, allowing you to collect valuable builder NFTs at no cost.

The Waitlist game lasts 2 weeks and then leads into the Scout Game.

TL;DR: Think fantasy sports for open-source development. Collect developer NFTs, earn points when they merge Pull Requests in approved repositories, and win rewards. Some projects even offer additional crypto incentives.

The Scout Game is designed to reward individuals for identifying and supporting emerging developer talent within onchain ecosystems. As a Scout, your goal is to recognize promising builders early in their journey and help them gain visibility. In return, you earn rewards based on their success.

This model shifts the focus away from pure memetics and toward supporting talent. When supporting developers who contribute to open-source projects, you align your incentives with both their growth and the broader goal of the blockchain ecosystem to attract and empower more builders.

By aligning the interests of Scouts, Builders, and blockchain ecosystems seeking to attract more development on their chains and protocols, the Scout Game addresses key challenges in discovering, rewarding, and nurturing open-source contributors and project developers.

1. Identifying Talent Early

The Scout Game rewards those with a keen eye for builders, offering Scouts an opportunity to participate in the success of developers they believe in. It effectively crowdsources talent discovery, decentralizing the process of identifying high-potential contributors.

2. Rewarding Meaningful Contributions

For builders, the Scout Game offers an alternative way to gain recognition and resources by directly tying rewards to tangible contributions. Builders can focus on delivering value while gaining visibility and support through the network of Scouts.

3. Ecosystem Growth

Blockchain ecosystems have long relied on grants and hackathons to attract developers, but these approaches come with challenges. Grants are costly and often deliver inconsistent results, with developers frequently moving on after receiving funding. Hackathons can produce quick wins, but rarely lead to sustained contributions. The Scout Game introduces a more durable solution by incentivizing developers to engage deeply with a blockchain ecosystem. Through ongoing contributions to open-source projects, developers not only gain visibility but also become integral, long-term contributors to the ecosystem.

The Scout Game taps into the core ethos of decentralized networks—community-driven discovery and value creation—by rewarding those who contribute to the growth and sustainability of crypto networks.

How it Works for Scouts

Scouts participate by collecting NFTs associated with top builders during each season. As these builders excel—by contributing to codebases—Scouts accumulate points. The more successful your chosen builders, the more points you earn.

Scouts are not only identifying stars—they are earning real rewards as their builders thrive. By accumulating Scout Points, you can exchange them for credits to scout even more builders, boosting your standing within the game and increasing your potential rewards.

Key Scout Actions:

• Collect NFTs from top builders every season.

• Earn Scout Points when the builders you back succeed in open-source contributions.

How it Works for Builders

Builders in the Scout Game gain recognition by actively contributing to approved projects. Each season lasts three months, and builders earn Scout Points by completing specific tasks tied to their contributions.

Ways Builders Earn Points:

• Impact! Submit a Pull Request (PR) to an approved open-source project and get it accepted.

• First Commit! Make your first-ever code contribution to an approved project.

• Streaks! Complete a streak of three PRs within a specific time period.

The Scout Game introduces a new approach to discovering and rewarding emerging talent in onchain ecosystems. By engaging Scouts to identify promising builders and rewarding meaningful open-source contributions, it creates an environment where both parties benefit from each other’s success. Unlike traditional methods like grants or hackathons, which often yield short-term or inconsistent results, the Scout Game fosters long-term engagement and growth within blockchain ecosystems.

Whether you’re a Scout helping developers gain visibility or a builder making impactful contributions, the game rewards those who contribute to the sustainability and growth of decentralized networks.

With the Waitlist already live, now is the perfect time to join, secure your spot, and become part of a community shaping the future of open source blockchain development.

• A cast about my dog was my most popular cast in ages. What can I buy her for 5 USDC?

• I don’t talk about it much but remember that time I won an Emmy?

• A weekend sneak peak about the Scout Game.

• Where I work from, but for real.

• Posting daily about my crypto optimism. Here is one.

• Everything I casted about the new iPhone was a hit. The people love iPhone.

• BuilderFi

• Cracked

• What can Purple do for Farcaster Content?

• Software Projects on Hypersub

• Purple Builders

• Returning to iPhone

• Task-Talent Matchmaking in Decentralized Networks

• Task-Talent Matchmaking in Free and Open Source Software Communities

The original question Dan was replying to was, why has growth of new users slowed for Farcaster? Dan argues that Warpcast's slowing user growth and retention is due to a lack of diverse and engaging content across different interest areas. Ted added nuance to this position, which Dan agreed with.

Farcaster is full of amazing content in one niche vertical: crypto, which happens to be a vertical I'm very interested in. Outside of that, we have some great channels like /gardening and /cooking, but they don’t necessarily contain content you couldn’t find on other networks. We can break the problem into three core areas that are affecting Farcaster's ability to grow:

1. Not enough interest verticals outside of crypto (and in some cases, even within it).

2. Not enough key opinion leaders (KOLs), or an inability to create new KOLs for the interest verticals on the network.

3. Not enough content that isn’t available—often better—elsewhere.

The solution to this problem will likely come from Product-Led Growth (PLG), where product improvements directly drive user acquisition and retention, in partnership with third-party developers and community leaders. Much of the promise around Warpcast in 2024 is the developer "lego blocks" that allow you to build things that aren’t possible on other networks. While new "legos" are being introduced, we should look for some combination of Frames (with Transactions), Composer Actions, and Cast Actions to create a community experience that can’t be found elsewhere. For example, if you’re an F1 fan, there’s already great content on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. So, what kind of solution can be created on Warpcast that is truly differentiated? How can Composer Actions enhance your posts? Imagine Composer Actions including race positioning or a gif of the moment you’re commenting on, Frames allowing in-race wagers, or Cast Actions signaling a vote for inclusion in the upcoming newsletter.

What if you could subscribe with a credit card or Apple Pay to a community’s Hypersub and, for $5 a month, have posting permissions in the channel, with 100% of the proceeds split among the channel's top content contributors via Rounds.wtf?

We also need better tools to allow developers to sign up users to Farcaster—whether at full price, subsidized, or completely free. Imagine a tool that marketing and community managers could embed behind a Telegram chat or custom landing page, or one that app developers could integrate with a simple “Sign Up for Farcaster” button.

It should also be easy to give communities their own native app that includes only their channels. Kiosk proves that consumer-grade internet client experiences can be made as high-quality native apps. Imagine downloading "RaceFi" from the App Store, signing up, and immediately seeing F1 content in one tab and community mints in another. You could make a $5 in-app purchase to subscribe to the Hypersub, start earning by posting content, and use your earnings to place in-race wagers through a custom frame. This is the kind of vertical-specific experience that could differentiate Farcaster communities.

What if there were even simpler solutions? Tools that allow non-technical community leaders to onboard entire communities via a WYSIWYG landing page builder, with signups sponsored by third-party organizations, could make a huge impact.

Purple is a decentralized organization with limited operational capacity, best understood as a decentralized grant program. Teams apply for grants, we approve them, and they are responsible for the delivery and execution. You do not need to be a member of Purple to apply for a grant. I’d love to see Purple fund experiments that focus on onboarding more interesting content to Farcaster. We have a 38 ETH treasury, and what better way to use it than addressing the highest priority issue in the Farcaster ecosystem: content diversification and user retention. We also have many friends who want to see us and Farcaster succeed, and they can lead successful projects to additional funding. These experiments should be grounded in real metrics—how many of your onboarded users are retained after 7, 30, or 90 days?

Purple is ready for your Content Onboarding Experiments. The ecosystem will need to take many shots on goal—let Purple help accelerate the number of attempts.

Farcaster's growth challenge isn’t going to solve itself, but you can play a part. Don’t wait—if you have a plan, DM me and let’s discuss how to make it happen. If you’re still developing your ideas, join channels like /growth or /product to connect with others and start brainstorming. The sooner we collaborate, the faster we can unlock the platform's potential. Form a group chat, share your thoughts, and start taking action.

Are you interested in building some of the software that could be required? I’ve outlined several software-related objectives in this post, and there are many more. I would love to fund Composer Actions that help people create better content and libraries that make it easy for any app to sign up a Farcaster user. If you have a credible plan for building something great, lets get a prop up to fund your development!

Farcaster's growth challenge won’t be solved by one initiative alone, but together, we can support the experiments that lead to real impact. Let’s work side by side, explore creative solutions, and build the tools needed to foster a more engaging and diverse community on Farcaster.

By way of filter, here is a list of projects I use on a weekly basis if not more frequent.

• Warpcast - @dwr.eth, Founder

  • Where I read social media

  • Purple #238

• Base - @jessepollak, Base builder #001

  • Where I transact the most

  • Purple #169

• Zora - @tyson, Founder

  • Where I mint my art

  • Purple #23

• Paragraph - @meesh, Designer

  • Where I post my essays

  • Purple #139

• Obsidian - @kepano, CEO (Purple #269)

  • Where I keep all of my notes

  • Purple #269

• Neynar - @rish, Founder

  • How I develop on Farcaster

  • Purple #77

• Hypersub - @nonlinear.eth, Founder

  • How I run my art subscription

  • Purple #239

• Supercast - @woj.eth, Founder

  • Where I scheduled casts, use chron feeds and claim Moxie

  • Purple 239

• Hats Protocol - @scottrepreneur.eth

  • How I manage my onchain organizations

  • Purple #48

• Buoy - @pfista, Founder

  • How I search for Casts

  • Purple #62

• Ponder - @cojo.eth, Founder

  • How I do polls and surveys on Warpcast

  • Purple #7

• View.art - @phil, Founder

  • How I display art on my dedicated art screen

  • Purple #15

• Bracket - @maxp

  • Where I play social sports games

  • Purple #38

• Nounspace - @RealityCrafter, Founder

  • Where I have my Nouns Farcaster dashboard

  • Purple #42

• Interface - @annoushka.eth, Founder

  • How I stay on top of my friends onchain

  • Purple #344

• Titles - @sorenwrenn, Founder

  • How I create art on my phone

  • Purple #389

I'm a big fan of what the Fabric team is building with Hypersub. Hypersub is a tool to create recurring revenue with NFT subscriptions. As one of the early adopters, I had one of the first Hypersubs around my Studio2 art project, following closely behind 0xen. Having a Hypersub enhances creating digital art by providing a built-in audience. This model addresses a common challenge in memetic art, where creators often experience unpredictable minting patterns - sometimes getting 1 mint, then 3 mints, then 1 mint, before suddenly reaching 20K mints. With a Hypersub of about 100 collectors, I can ensure my favorite pieces reach the wallets of 100 real humans. Additionally, I'm approaching 2 ETH in Hypersub proceeds and benefited from organic promotion when Base permissionlessly shared my Hypersub on their X account one day, highlighting the potential for unexpected exposure in this space.

The early adoption phase of Hypersubs within the Farcaster ecosystem was characterized by a small, art-focused community. Like many early adopters, I subscribed to all of them, both to support fellow creators and to gain insights into different implementation strategies. Initially, my Hypersub offering included an airdrop of everything I minted onchain to subscribers. However, as my minting frequency increased to 2 or 3 times a day, I adjusted the focus of the Hypersub to be a curated collection of mints. While art subscriptions were predominant in the early days, the Hypersub model has since diversified. Current implementations include integrations with automod for restricted posting to channels and the creation of gated groupchats. This demonstrates the flexibility of Hypersub and its adaptability to various use cases. I've really enjoyed observing the community experiment with all these tools and am identifying many things I need to incorporate into my own sub.

Today I began exploring the state of software on Hypersub. I had been supporting Herocast and Buoy on Hypersub and had a general awareness that more software projects were using it. Upon investigation, I discovered a comprehensive directory page showcasing a range of software applications. This discovery coincided with my search for more Farcaster power tools for the upcoming launch of my new app, The Scout Game, a Farcaster-centric BuilderFi app. As part of this project, I am particularly interested in enhanced analytics and monitoring tools. Here's a curated list of Hypersub-based tools that align with these needs:

• Buoy Pro - Buoy is currently the most effective Farcaster search engine, available across web, android, and ios platforms. It features great cast actions for following cast discussions and offers keyword monitoring. Buoy ranks among my top 3 Farcaster apps. The Hypersub subscription unlocks additional features within the app.

• Intelligent - This application provides comprehensive and visually appealing analytics for your casts.

• Fiids - Fiids enables the creation of highly customizable dashboards for cast consumption and engagement. The interface allows for the addition of multiple columns, each functioning as a module. These modules can display various views of your Farcaster graph, individual channels, custom lists of casters, RSS feeds, onchain transactions, and more. It offers functionality reminiscent of a more advanced version of TweetDeck.

• Herocast - Herocast is designed as a professional client offering features such as analytics , scheduling , and management of multiple accounts. At CharmVerse, we leverage its Hats Protocol integration to enable multiple CharmVerse team members to operate one account.

The Hypersub directory currently lists at least 20 other apps that, while not immediately relevant to my current needs, represent a range of tools and services that might be in the future. Hypersub provides a way for a wide range of creator and builder types to build a subscription business. From software to community it is proving to be a valuable crypto lego block to build with.