©️ 2025 0xLuo. All rights reserved. Chinese Version

2024 has been a surprising year for Farcaster. According to the dune data, the user base has grown from under 50,000 at the beginning of the year to around 750,000 today. DAUs climbed from fewer than 2,000 in January to a peak of around 70,000 in July, now stabilizing at about 40,000. Although the platform remains relatively niche, it has clearly gained much more attention compared to last year.

One key factor behind this significant growth is that Farcaster, as a crypto-native social network, has become an important social layer for several blockchains (particularly the Base chain). It can also be seen as an economic ecosystem—AKA Farconomy. Projects originating from the Farcaster community or assets launched via the Farcaster Launchpad have garnered notable market attention. The trading volume of mainstream tokens related to Farcaster reached around $1B in both April and November, driven primarily by the $DEGEN token, launched at the start of the year, and the CLANKER ecosystem token, introduced towards the year’s end.

1 $DEGEN and the creator economy

The first wave of growth for Farcaster in late January and early February was likely driven by the launch of the community memecoin $DEGEN and the release of the Frames feature, along with their interplay. The wealth effect of the $DEGEN airdrop attracted significant attention, and for an extended period, there was a strong correlation between casting activity on Farcaster and the price of $DEGEN.

$DEGEN notably kicked off the trend of tipping tokens within the Farcaster community. As tpan observed, the onchain tipping mechanism initiated by $DEGEN proved to be an effective growth strategy. It encouraged the creation of high-quality content and fostered active community engagement to some extent.

Subsequently, other tipping tokens emerged on the Base chain, such as HAM ($TN100X), $FARTHER, $BUILD (Nominating as tipping), $MASKS, and $WILD. On the Zora chain, there are tokens like $ENJOY and $IMAGEINE, while the Optimism chain saw the rise of $REGEN, among others. lijin described these as "scene memecoins", meaning tokens tied to specific community rules as their use case. To some extent, they have become a distinctive creator incentive model unique to Farcaster.

However, the majority of tipping tokens gradually faded due to their lack of real value and practical use cases. As the pioneer and leader in this space, $DEGEN stood out by offering more diverse applications. Many devs within the Farcaster eco attempted to integrate $DEGEN into their projects, and for a time, $DEGEN almost became the de facto currency for transactions within Farcaster-based apps. In late March, the launch of Degen L3, built on Base L2, further expanded the utility of this memecoin. This innovation may have contributed to the influx of speculative money into Base, propelling $DEGEN to its ATH during this period.

The close integration of $DEGEN with Farcaster ecosystem apps is a win-win situation. For these ecosystem projects, Farcaster's open framework and composability provide valuable social graphs that help with rapid user acquisition during the cold start phase. Meanwhile, scene memecoins like $DEGEN can serve as the native circulating currency of the Farcaster ecosystem, offering the asset liquidity needed for application cold starts. For $DEGEN, these projects offer token utility and provide real-world use cases, even contributing to passive staking. As a result, $DEGEN was able to capture significant attention for a period of time, such as:

• Tip with $DEGEN: Beyond its basic use for tipping other users, $DEGEN can also be used for activities like participating in Perl game, buying tokens in Mintclub, and engaging in Degenpad ITOs.

• Mint with $DEGEN: NFT platforms like Zora and Highlight support using $DEGEN for minting NFTs.

• Trade with $DEGEN: In early versions of SocialFi apps like Drakula, Jam, Braket.Game, Clubcast, AlfaFrens, and FarFantasy, $DEGEN was chosen as the in-app currency.

• Build with $DEGEN: After the launch of Degen L3, many projects began directly building on it, giving rise to numerous apps from the Degen community.

However, the Degen L3 powered by Conduit services faced many challenges. There was a period when block production stopped, which was a very tough time. During the attempt to migrate, it got into a dispute with Conduit, and the long period of decline really tested the community and the team. Luckily, the team kept moving forward, and $DEGEN is now live on Coinbase and Binance. The liquidity has also extending beyond Degen L3 and Base to include Ethereum and Arbitrum. Regarding Degen’s future, @jacek mentioned in Tako Community Call #5 that they will keep encouraging high-quality content and real interaction on Farcaster. The next focus will be Degen L3, aiming to attract more developers to build a better "the Las Vegas of blockchains".

In general, similar to Friend.Tech, many SocialFi apps within the Farcaster ecosystem (most of them using various bonding curve models) were only popular for a short period. On one hand, there are fewer users, especially in Farcaster's community, compared to SocialFi apps based on Twitter’s social graph. On the other hand, many economic models' problem is clear: it mainly depends on ongoing user investment and token speculation, without sustainable value creation or long-term rewards. As a result, when the hype fades and user involvement and trading volume go down, projects can face liquidity problems.

However, whether it’s $DEGEN or the incentive models of Farcaster’s SocialFi apps, even though most didn’t last long, their efforts are still valuable. As @edisonchen said, the incentive models in social products should be seen as a game, not needing to be perfect, and they should become a part of community culture. More incentive models should be created to support different kinds of social network users and behaviors.

2 Farcaster is Dead? Long live Farcaster!

Farcaster's rise at the beginning of this year kept it in the spotlight of the crypto market, and it completed a a new $150 million fundraise on May 21, with registration numbers reaching a new high that day. It was even seen as a potential leader for the next generation of social platforms. However, As the crypto market fluctuates, the tipping economy becomes stale, Farcaster's SocialFi apps like Friend Tech lose their hype, and only minimal profits can be made on Farcaster, DAUs and new registrations gradually declined.

Some even started questioning: "Are the real user numbers low? Is the $150 million funding for Farcaster just a game for VCs to benefit their LPs?." Of course, the claim that Farcaster only had 50 to 5,000 DAUs was a misunderstanding. He wrongly equated Power Badger qDAUs with total active users. The actual DAU remained around 40,000 during the low point, although it's clear that there's some inflation in the figures. Nevertheless, this trend has been in decline. Many people have Farcaster accounts, but some are no longer active.

Additionally, with a relatively small user base, starting projects in the Farcaster ecosystem often requires the courage and capital to "run on love". Due to various reasons, we’ve seen many projects choose to shut down, pivot, or even leave the Farcaster ecosystem. Projects like nook (the Farcaster client, now focusing on interest-based sharing), automod, wildcard, castgame, beearly, and buttrfly have all chosen to sunset. Some Farcaster builders have shifted their focus to Solana or Twitter, such as @brian, who announced unloney was moving from Base to Solana and now mainly operates on Twitter. @billzh also announced that the audio space app aburra would stop updating and launched a new SocialFi app, tribe.run, on Solana.

As mentioned by @artlu, who temporarily left Farcaster in August, there are several reasons why people leave Farcaster:

• The technology is still early: The technology is not fully developed, and there are several issues, such as data synchronization problems and vulnerabilities to attacks.

• The community remains tiny and closed: The core community is still small, conservative, and insular, creating an information echo chamber and a lack of openness to outsiders.

• Unappealing growth paths: The strategies for increasing content don't seem enticing over the medium term, and there is a lack of standout features to attract new users.

• Constrained business opportunities: The business space on Farcaster is limited, as the major opportunities have already been captured by the team and early adopters, leaving only scraps for others.

These criticisms are not without merit, after all, data doesn't lie. It makes you wonder—does Farcaster still have hope? 😂 However, those still on Farcaster believe many things have remained the same: the unique community culture, the committed builders, and the vibrant ecosystem created by its open protocol. So, even in tough times, there is still some hope.

2.1 The team is keep building

The Farcaster team outlined Farcaster’s strategy during FarCon: to grow with crypto , create cozy corners, and make more social Legos. In practice, the team actively engages with the community, responding to feedback, improving the platform, and rolling out new features to advance these strategies and boost DAUs.

• Growing with the crypto means positioning Farcaster as a cornerstone of the crypto economy to attract more crypto users.

• Creating more cozy corners involves enhancing features like Channels so that users from diverse backgrounds can find authentic social experiences on the platform.

• Building more social Legos focuses on improving the protocol layer. Examples include introducing features like Frames, Actions, upgrading Snapchain, a faster and more scalable storage solution, and improving the overall protocol experience. These enhancements make it easier for devs to build diverse, permissionless apps on this open, programmable social protocol.

While these strategies might not yield immediate results, they are designed to cultivate a high-engagement community, a distinct infrastructure, and innovative applications. Over time, they will serve as catalysts for explosive growth when the moment is ripe.

2.2 Grow with Crypto → Synergizing with onchain ecosystems

Farcaster stores its onchain data on the Optimism network, while Frames also support operations on multiple chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Degen, Gnosis, Optimism, Zora, and Polygon. Additionally, most Farcaster users have linked crypto wallets (EVM and Solana addresses). This makes Farcaster inherently a crypto-native social network. Due to this feature, Farcaster naturally aligns with the crypto market and onchain ecosystems, often serving as the social layer for many chains.

Farcaster’s close association with Coinbase’s ecosystem, stemming from its founders’ Coinbase background and the prevalence of early Coinbase users within the community, naturally draws it closer to Coinbase’s blockchain, Base.

For Farcaster, most projects in the Farcaster ecosystem prioritize launching their assets on the Base chain. This makes these assets prime speculative targets on Base, while enabling the chain to help Farcaster evolve from a crypto-native social network into a broader crypto economy. At the same time, Base chain users represent potential new users for Farcaster.

For the Base chain, Farcaster’s user base is largely composed of loyal, high-quality users, making it a natural fit. Beyond that, Farcaster can serve as a premier dev community for Base projects, as well as a “backyard” for community engagement, brand promotion, and interactive outreach. This strengthens both community dynamics and user stickiness.

The synergistic relationship between the social protocol and the onchain ecosystem drives mutual growth and shared benefits.

2.3 Create cozy corners → A larger community

As of today, Farcaster users have left their footprints all over the globe. Being a social network, Farcaster naturally comes with social functionalities. Many people who join Farcaster find their own cozy corners in various channels, engaging in interactions and building friendships with like-minded individuals. These connections often extend beyond Farcaster's social media platform, branching into groups on Telegram or WeChat, and even transitioning from URL to IRL.

Whether it's Farcon in LA in May, Farcon Asia in Singapore in September, or Farcaster meetups during crypto conferences in Hong Kong, Dubai, and Bangkok, you can always feel the warmth and friendliness of the Farcaster community.

Building projects on Farcaster requires the confidence and patience of a long-term thinker. Fortunately, we can still see a vibrant community of builders gathering on Farcaster, fostering a unique Build culture. Beyond the dev hubs of North America and Europe, Farcaster builders are now scattered across the globe, driving its global adoption.

Localized developer communities, like Farcaster Builders India (/fbi), have emerged within the ecosystem. Events like FarCon Asia have brought together numerous Asian devs, showcasing the network’s global reach. During events like FarCon, EDCON, and Token 2049, initiatives such as FarHack highlight the constant innovation by Farcaster’s developer community.

The Farcaster team places significant emphasis on engaging with builders and users. This includes interactions on Farcaster itself, regular AMAs, biweekly Farcaster Dev Calls, and special events like Farcaster Dev Day. Thanks to these efforts, new projects continually spring up on Farcaster. Platforms like Launchcaster, initially a hub for new project announcements, remain lively and active.

Even if many initiatives don’t achieve long-term success, they pave the way for others, inspiring future builders and pushing the ecosystem forward.

2.4 Make More Legos → Build Programmable Social

Farcaster has always positioned itself as sufficient decentralized: identities are stored onchain to ensure a degree of decentralization, while content is stored in off-chain hubs for better performance. Compared to more decentralized social networks like Nostr, Farcaster emphasizes its role as a Programmable Social network, allowing users and devs to enhance functionality and experiences through programming. Farcaster bridges onchain graphs and social graphs, enabling devs to permissionlessly leverage its open data hubs and APIs to build diverse clients and apps, creating more social Legos.

From Open Social Graphs to Social Reputation Systems

A recent example of leveraging social graphs is the popular crypto market analysis platform kaito.ai, which integrates a social reputation system based on Twitter’s social graph. Similarly, the Farcaster ecosystem has seen the emergence of numerous social reputation protocols. Devs can freely use Farcaster's open social graph to create social reputation systems, forming part of the infra for upper-layer apps. These systems can be used for gatekeeping, incentive evaluations, content moderation, and more. Notable examples include Power Badge, OpenRank, FarScores, Neynar User Score, and Talent’s Build Score.

• Power Badge

Power Badge is a tag awarded by Warpcast to active and engaging non-spammers. Although it is no longer visible in the Warpcast frontend, it remains the only social reputation system stored in the protocol-level Hubs. In the past, Power Badge had various use cases, such as filtering search results on @buoy, enabling Priority Mode in the comment section on Recaster, creating PowerBadge-gated groups on Warpcast, hosting PowerBadge-gated voice chat rooms on FarHouse, and being a potential criterion for airdrops or whitelist eligibility in some projects.

@ryya's Power Badge trilogy stands out as the most in-depth exploration of Power Badge mechanics. In Unlocking the Power Badge, ryya provides a detailed analysis of influencing factors such as activity, affinity/quality, and labeling. These parameters appear to be interdependent and may be dynamically weighted based on other factors like DAU, user engagement, and interactions. The final installment, Balancing the Power Badge, discusses both the benefits and the potential challenges of the system.

While Power Badge holders enjoyed higher exposure and prioritized recommendations, it sometimes discouraged new users. Additionally, algorithmic biases and attempts to game the system emerged as concerns. Ultimately, the team decided to remove the Power Badge display from Warpcast, leading to a decline in its adoption and related discussions.

• Openrank

Openrank aims to address trustworthiness issues in social networks through a profile reputation score. Its ranking strategy relies on two key reputation graphs: Following and Engagement. The "Following" ranking strategy calculates rankings based solely on follower relationships, where each follow action is given equal weight. The more commonly used "Engagement" ranking strategy, on the other hand, considers a variety of interaction behaviors such as likes, replies, recasts, mentions, and follows. Each action is weighted differently based on its contribution to trustworthiness, allowing a comprehensive reputation ranking to emerge. (For a deeper dive into Openrank's mechanism, check out @rjs's 10. Deep Dive: OpenRank and Andrew Hong's article on OpenRank: Building Graph Datasets for Contextual Crypto App Feeds.)

Currently, Openrank is also part of the daily reward distribution for $DEGEN, providing additional daily allocation for users ranked in the top 5000 to incentivize high-quality, active users. Furthermore, Openrank has partnered with Neynar to offer a personalized content feed, “For you”, which can be adopted by third-party clients. It has also collaborated with Once Upon to display onchain activity recommendations based on Openrank. The Openrank team is planning to leverage AI agents in their future Cura project, using Openrank rankings to manage Channels members, content moderation, and incentivization.

• FarScores

FarScores (also known as Social Capital Score/Rank) is a metric developed by Farcaster's data infra, Airstack, that measures a user's influence within the network. It quantifies a user's social influence by analyzing the downstream effects of their actions, such as casting, liking, and recasting content. Each Cast can also have its own Cast Score, derived from FarScores, to evaluate the impact of each cast. Methods for increasing FarScores are discussed in @aaronv.eth's article, Maximizing Your Social Capital Score on Farcaster.

FarScores is applied in games like the betting game Perl and the SocialFi card game FarFantasy, but it is most widely recognized through Moxie, the largest application of FarScores in the Farcaster ecosystem. Initially, Moxie airdropped rewards based on Cast Scores, and users could later earn Moxie through Cast Scores as well. Regular users can also earn more Moxie by investing in high-performing KOLs or Channel's Fan Tokens. This incentivization model encourages meaningful, valuable social interactions. For a detailed understanding of how Moxie works, see @kaloh's article, Moxie’s Leap to Base: Elevating the Onchain Social Economy.

• Neynar User Score

The Neynar User Score is generated based on user behavior on the platform. The score ranges from 0 to 1, reflecting the credibility of the user as a high-quality participant. Users can improve their score by engaging in high-quality interactions with other quality users. The score is updated weekly. The majority of users have scores in the 0.5-0.6 range, with only over 27,000 users scoring above 0.7, and fewer than 2,500 users with scores above 0.9.

The Neynar User Score is widely used as a participation threshold for the Farcaster ecosystem’s memecoin launchpad, such as requiring a Neynar score higher than 0.5 to participate in a token launch by @clanker or requiring a score higher than 0.7 to join the presale of a token launch by @larrybot.

• Talent Protocol’s Build Score

Talent Protocol is an aggregation layer for social reputation, centered around builders. It connects their on-chain and off-chain (Github, LinkedIn) activities as much as possible to aggregate credentials, networks, and reputation, creating a unified open reputation layer. The Talent Passport aggregates various reputation data points (Credentials), including identity (ENS, Gitcoin Passport, Farcaster accounts, etc.), activities (active users across different chains, Social Capital Rank representing Farcaster activity, etc.), and skills (onchain development records, hackathon participation, etc.), to calculate a dynamic Builder Score, representing a user’s reputation as an onchain builder.

The most well-known application of the Builder Score was likely Talent’s previous Builder airdrop incentive program, BUILD, where part of the daily allocation was tied to your Builder Score. Currently, Talent’s Build Score has been adopted by many applications, such as Basenames, Etherscan, icebreaker, Web3.bio, and is expected to play a role in unsecured lending in the future.

From Diverse Clients to a Comprehensive Application Ecosystem

As an open social protocol, Farcaster naturally has many devs building clients based on it. However, “build your own client” and carving a path outside of Warpcast is no easy feat. Many clients have failed before they got halfway in their ventures, such as the early clients Discove and Jam (the early version was a client), both of which have pivoted. This year, many clients have also announced they will cease updates, like @slokh’s flink and nook, and the client with its own tokenomics, wildcard. buttrfly also chose to shut down at the end of the year. Despite this, some clients have managed to find their own niche, achieving a certain degree of product-market fit (PMF), and show resilience, including:

• Social aggregation clients across multiple networks, such as @fireflyapp, @yup, and @phaverapp.

• @woj’s @super, offering many convenient features while actively exploring anonymous casts, AI pets, and other features. Its subscription feature ensures a steady income stream.

• @haole’s @recaster-fc, which quickly updates based on user needs, actively integrating Moxie, Clanker dashboards, and other user-friendly features.

• @farquest, which explores features beyond clients, including memecoin trading.

• The former Mirror team’s @kiosk, integrating Farcaster’s social feed with NFT feeds.

• @hellno.eth’s @herocast, focusing on multi-account team collaboration and user growth.

In addition, there are several unique clients based on existing apps that integrate Farcaster or focus on specific verticals:

• @blockbeatsasia.eth: The first news media platform to integrate Farcaster for community building.

• Takocast: A lifestyle-sharing community app built on Farcaster, focused on “High tech, High life”, bringing together individuals passionate about scientific exploration and personal sovereignty.

• @telcaster: A Farcaster client based on the Telegram Mini-app.

Beyond clients, the diverse apps built on the Farcaster open protocol are continuously emerging. These include short videos from @drakula, long-form videos and live streams from @streamm, photo sharing from @moshicam and @rodeodotclub, prediction markets from @swaye and /limitless, onchain data tracking and copy trading from @interface and /castmoney, group chats and trading via /frens, and memecoin trading with @bolide, among many others.

Of course, there are many more that I haven’t mentioned, scattered throughout my casts from the past year. @sebastianlehrer once created a fairly comprehensive Farcaster Ecosystem Map (updated as of June 22), and a16z listed some Farcaster ecosystem projects in their State of Crypto Report 2024 (released on Oct. 16), though these are no longer fully up-to-date, as Farcaster’s ecosystem projects continue to evolve rapidly.

In short, with so many builders gathered here, and because Farcaster is an open, permissionless, programmable, composable, and crypto-native social protocol, it naturally has a very rich application ecosystem. Among these, there are always some innovative, market-driven, high-quality products that meet the needs of certain user segments. With a strong community and product foundation, what’s missing is just attention, one small spark could ignite the entire ecosystem. Sure enough, as market conditions improve, the favorable winds are still blowing in this direction.

3 AI as the Antidote for DeSoc

2024 is proving to be another year of rapid advancements in AI, and this trend has undoubtedly infiltrated the crypto world. Jeffy Yu has even introduced the concept of web4, which combines the social interactivity of Web2, the decentralized autonomy of Web3, and the intelligence of AI into a unified AGI network. In web4, AI will be embedded in every corner, with agents carrying out complex tasks, generating creative works, and innovating autonomously in ways we have yet to fully imagine.

According to the Google Agents Whitepaper, an AI agent is an application that observes the world and uses the available tools to achieve its goals. These agents are autonomous and can act independently without human intervention. Social networks are actually an ideal environment for AI agents to demonstrate their capabilities, and as an open, programmable, and composable social network, Farcaster is a perfect incubator for AI agents, featuring the unique traits inherent to crypto. Thus, we are witnessing the rise of AI agents on Farcaster, attracting market attention and driving the prosperity of the entire ecosystem.

3.1 Memecoins + AI Agents

Farcaster initially featured some utility-based AI agents, such as @askgina.eth, which provides the latest crypto data and news, and @atlas, which gathers information from Farcaster. However, it wasn’t until the appearance of Aether (@aethernet) that people began to find interactions with AI agents truly engaging. Aether was deployed by @martin, the dev behind the famous memecoin Higher, initially serving as a community ambassador to promote Higher and help it reach the Agentic Network. We can see from interactions with Aether (like Jesus Crypto Plaza’s interview with Aether) that it is thoughtful, genuinely interactive, and logically clear, even relying on the capabilities of the Claude model. This led to Aether quickly gaining a large following on Farcaster.

Aether has its own wallet address for donations, a Hypersub subscription, and has launched NFTs on Zora. As a result of its popularity, Aether has earned substantial revenue. Aether also demonstrates autonomous interaction, summoning @paybot to send money, calling on @bountycaster to post bounty tasks, recieving tips, and even asking @askgina for answers to questions it doesn’t understand. Consequently, Aether’s presence has drawn attention to these projects. Like its ERC20z standard NFT launched on Zora can be traded on artrun, and its cast has been turned into a memecoin on belief. In short, Aether’s arrival has significantly contributed to the flourishing of the Farcaster ecosystem, embodying the Higher community’s motto: “Aim HIGHER, Win Together.”

So what makes the AI agents running on Farcaster special, as mentioned in Bankless’ article Farcaster: The Next Big AI Agents Hub?

• No API restrictions: Farcaster offers decentralization, programmability, and composability.

• Farcaster accounts can hold self-hosted wallets, providing a foundation for onchain identities and transactions.

• AI agents can interoperate with Farcaster’s expansive ecosystem.

The memecoins community has launched a variety of AI agents, keeping up with the narrative of AI, which has proven to be an effective way to reclaim market attention. After Aether set a strong precedent, more AI agents have followed on Farcaster. For example, the $BLEU community introduced @elefant, and the $MFER community launched @mfergpt, both of which serve similar roles in community promotion and user interaction. Additionally, the founder of the Ham ($TN100x) community, @deployer, has introduced the more tool-oriented @bankr, allowing users to interact with it in casts to quickly purchase tokens. This will eventually expand to Twitter and feature standalone terminals. The $ENJOY community has launched the NFT issuance agent @enjoyr, which allows users to interact with it in casts, attaching images and names to quickly launch an open edition 1155 NFT.

3.2 AI Agents → memecoins

In this memecoins supercycle, the memecoin craze is certainly sweeping through every corner of the crypto world. While Solana’s pumpfun was booming with memecoins, Farcaster finally saw the emergence of a unique memecoin launchpad, an AI agent @clanker dedicated to launching tokens. The rest of the story is well-known: a massive amount of tokens were launched through Clanker, bringing the market’s attention back to the Farcaster ecosystem.

@clanker allows users to interact with it within casts. By providing a token name and ticker, users can quickly launch a memecoin on the Base chain, making memecoin issuance as simple as casting to launch, with token launchers also receiving a share of transaction fees. While the concept of AI agents issuing tokens was perfectly timed with the trend, the rapid rise of Clanker is partly due to the Lores behind the memecoins launched by Clanker.

The interaction between Aether and Clanker was a key moment that helped propel Clanker into the spotlight. Aether called upon Clanker to launch a memecoin called $LUM, and although human guidance and human-designed prompts were involved, the final token issuance was a result of AI agents’ autonomous collaboration. This process resembled an AI-agent-driven Imitation Game, which @itsmechaseb described as The Dawn of AI Autonomy.

Afterward, the anonymous casting account @superanon from @super collaborated with @clanker to issue the memecoin $ANON. After the issuance, many users airdropped $ANON to @super founder @woj, who then airdropped the $ANON received to @super users, earning positive feedback and boosting community recognition. Following this, some builders began developing applications around $ANON, such as the anoncolors.com color NFT project with the $ANON "?" mark logo element based on /basecolors, and @slokh’s anonymous posting project @anoncast, which requires zk-proof of $ANON holdings. These efforts gave $ANON real use cases. Later, other anonymous posting accounts like rumourcast.xyz, 33bits.xyz, and 66bits.xyz also launched their respective memecoins through Clanker.

By employing zk-proof technology, anoncast attracted figures like Jesse and Vitalik to try the platform. Now, anoncast has expanded into anon.world, further enhancing zk verification methods and building a unique anonymous client. Anonymous posting has also allowed more people to express themselves freely, becoming a new social primitive in the Farcaster ecosystem.

There are many more stories like this with memecoins. The Openrank team designed a Clanker Index based on the holdings of Clanker’s tokens, as a reference for investors, while additional background on some Clanker tokens can be found in JamesX’s tweet.

Clanker has evolved beyond just a memecoin launchpad. Due to its high popularity and liquidity, it has become a platform for long-term projects to launch tokens, such as the human-AI symbiosis digital city native.fun, the long video and live streaming platform streamm.tv, the Frames game Clankermon, and the easiest Farcaster registration method provided by Newcaster. The success of these projects will not only increase Clanker’s platform influence but also benefit the Clanker ecosystem through transaction fees. Memecoins, due to their strong virality, are not confined to the Farcaster community, and thus we see the idea of “Meme goes out, money flow in, Farcaster ecosystem gets rich”.

3.3 AI Agents + Channels

3.3 AI Agents + Channels

This year, Channels went through a membership-based update as the old Channels weren’t working. While some Channels became influential communities, they didn’t bring in a lot of high-quality content or increase DAUs. The new version of Channels needs owners to manage and run them carefully, but running a community well is still a challenge. However, we can see that Moxie’s Fan tokens and other projects for Channels are trying to reward content and interactions, and Openrank’s Cura is using AI agents to help revitalize Channels.

Cura provides each channel with an AI agent built on Openrank, which helps manage members, content feed, handle the channel’s wallet, launch the channel’s tokens, and automatically give rewards to top contributors. This makes managing members, showing content, and distributing rewards easier and automatic. The age of using AI agents for content moderation and rewarding creators in Channels is coming.

This is a special use of AI agents in Farcaster, a crypto-native social network. According to Cura’s goals, it will turn Farcaster Channels into active, self-sustaining communities. With Cura, Channels will no longer just be places to chat, they will have their own economy, trust systems, and social currencies. Cura will become the growth driver for Farcaster Channels, and we’ll need to watch closely to see how it develops.

3.4 AI Agents + Everything

In addition to the AI agents mentioned above, Farcaster has seen the emergence of many other unique AI agents:

• Community Ambassadors: In addition to the $HIGHER community’s @aether, the $BLEU community launched @elefant and the $MFER community launched @mfergpt, all of which help memecoin communities by answering questions, promoting their brand, and providing emotional value.

• Token Launch: In addition to @clanker and @tinybot, there are also @larrybot (a memecoin launchpad with a presale internal mechanism), @wowza from wow.xyz, @heyterminal from terminal.co, @netprotocol from netprotocol.app, @launchtokenbot from beliefs.social, @jamai (the AI agents launchpad on BNB chain launched by Jam), and @bogusbob (a token launch platform on Solana).

• NFT Launch: Simply summon @toka or @enjoyr in a cast, add an image and a name, and you can quickly launch an open edition 1155 NFT.

• Trading: Use @bankr to summon it in a cast to buy tokens.

• Tools: @askgina.eth for on-chain information searches, @atlas for Farcaster information searches, and @talentmate.eth to identify and assess on-chain builders and their contributions.

• Art: @zerebro for creating and selling ASCII art, @artto-ai for art collecting, @palette for art appreciation, and @harmonybot helping users who hold $CHAOS generate and mint ASCII art NFTs.

• Others: @quaestor for DAO proposal analysis and @agentmilo, a conversation bot interested in cryptocurrency, art, and technology.

It’s clear that this list will continue to expand, especially as more AI agents launchpads emerge. With people and agents interacting with each other, and agents interacting among themselves, Farcaster is gradually becoming a human-machine coexisting social network, evolving into an expanded version of “Stanford Smallville”, enriching Farcaster’s fun and gameplay.

4 Summary and Outlook

Overall, from highs to lows, and from lows back to highs, Farcaster has surprised us in many ways throughout 2024, showcasing impressive performance as a crypto economy. What did Farcaster do right? It likely comes back to the team’s three strategies: growing with crypto and working in synergy with onchain ecosytems, fostering cozy corners for solid communities and build environments, and building an open, permissionless, and programmable protocol that leads to more Legos. These factors have allowed Farcaster to lead the new creator economy and capitalize on the AI agent trend.

However, it’s not time to get complacent just yet. The Farcaster community is still niche, and Farconomy remains small. User growth is always a challenge for emerging social networks. Farcaster must continue to leverage its unique features and strengths to attract more users and liquidity, bringing more attention to the platform. As for 2025, there’s still much to look forward to. Personally, I’m particularly excited about the following developments:

4.1 Will Farconomy Continue to Thrive?

Clanker, having gained significant attention and liquidity in the short term, is considered a major component of the Farcaster and Base ecosystems, acting like the Pump.fun of these ecosystems. While Clanker’s transaction volume is currently only 1/10th of Pump.fun’s, Clanker’s ecosystem is still steadily expanding.

Currently, the Clanker ecosystem includes not only useful tools built for Clanker, but also ecosystem apps based on Clanker. After Clanker v2 introduced the token launch API, it has become more scalable and composable. It’s not just a platform, but a protocol, and several projects based on the Clanker protocol have emerged, enabling a variety of token launch methods, not just launching tokens when casting on Farcaster. For example:

• clank.fun: A pumpfun-style frontend based on Clanker.

• anonfun: A combination of Clanker and anoncast for anonymous token launches.

• tinyagents.xyz: An AI agent memecoin launch platform based on Clanker, where users can customize AI agents and launch tokens mentioning @tinybot in the cast.

• clankpad: A token launch within channels, where launchers can earn 15% of transaction fees.

• @clankeroncall: Launch tokens by calling 1-775-252-6537.

The expansion of the Clanker ecosystem continues to build a moat and expand its influence. Therefore, Clanker remains highly anticipated in the future, with potential to continue being a leading force in Farconomy. Of course, other unique memecoin launchpads and projects that have issued assets and are still carefully building should not be overlooked, as they will all contribute to Farcaster’s continued growth with crypto.

4.2 Frame v2’s Mini Apps: The Next Growth Opportunity?

The Frames launched in early 2024 quickly attracted attention as an interactive window embedded with social media sources. Later, similar functionalities were introduced by Lens with Open Actions and Solana’s Blinks that supported Twitter. Frames enables reading user profiles and onchain actions, allowing for seamless interactions within a client’s content feed, such as transferring tokens, trading, minting NFTs, simple games, and viewing personal data (Aistack provides a trending Frames leaderboard).

However, after prolonged experimentation, devs found that Frame v1 had its limitations, such as constrained size and interaction capabilities, slow image rendering, and difficulties in searching for or saving temporary usage.

Against this backdrop, the Farcaster team launched Frames v2, featuring a full-screen interactive canvas based on HTML/CSS/JavaScript for richer in-client app interactions. It supports app requests for onchain transactions and signatures, as well as sending notifications to users within the client. In addition to direct access in the Feed, Warpcast also offers a convenient bottom-center menu entry for Frames.

Once Frames v2 was launched, many devs started building different types of mini-apps within it.

• Games: Onchain social gaming platform /farcade (which also supports both Telegram and Worldcoin platforms), trading games /clankermon, farming simulation games /farville, social prediction games, 2048, and more.

• AI agents: Chatbot by @buttrfly, which can perform real-time retrieval of Farcaster data, search users, channels, and popular casts. /booot allows users to customize and create different types of AI agents in the Frames, with support for real-time search. Shaw from ai16z expressed optimism regarding the use of AI agents in Frames during an interview.

• Launchpad: Onsen allows users to set parameters directly in Frames to launch memecoins.

• Tools: Various data dashboards like Degen, Moxie, Openrank, Clanker, TradingView.

• DeFi: Staking mining on Morpho, trading, tracking and copying friends’ trades via /banyan, transferring funds to friends with /payflow, and sending red packets via Onchain Gift Pack.

In the Web2 world, mini-apps on WeChat and Telegram’s Mini Apps are very successful examples of creating diverse app ecosystems within social products. WeChat Mini-apps, relying on WeChat’s large user base, cover areas like e-commerce, gaming, and life services, turning WeChat into a super app that integrates various services. Users can “use without downloading,” enjoying various services within WeChat without leaving the app. Meanwhile, Telegram’s Mini Apps have integrated the TON payment system and built a tokenized economic model to encourage user engagement, further pushing Web3 adoption.

Frames v2 has the ability to support almost all types of web applications. It seamlessly integrates Farcaster login, enabling “instant-on” functionality within the client. Combined with Farcaster’s open social graph, composable platform ecosystem, and the programmability of onchain crypto-native operations, it offers a different app experience from other social networks. This could make Farcaster’s client more engaging, offering fun new ways to interact. We look forward to seeing more interesting mini-apps in Frames v2, attracting more users to stay within the Farcaster client and contribute to the next growth point in user activity.

4.3 Will “Farcaster Become the Hotbed for AI Agent Development”?

We are seeing a growing number of AI agents on Farcaster, and the Farcaster ecosystem has already become an important part of AI in crypto. Farcaster’s open data hub provides a valuable social graph, positioning it as a crucial social data layer. In the future, more AI agents are expected to build within the Farcaster ecosystem.

AI agents, in addition to having Farcaster social media accounts, can also operate within Frames. Shaw, the founder of ai16z, mentioned in an interview that “Farcaster will become the hotbed for AI Agent development”, which is likely why Eliza quickly integrated with Farcaster. Their goal is to embed Eliza within Farcaster Frames. Farcaster Frames can integrate payments or applications, not just chat.

AI agents can also appear in other ecosystem clients/apps. For instance, the DotsML within the Native digital city’s ecosystem allows external AI agents (such as Clanker, Bankr, Atlas, etc.) to interact with internal agents called “Dots”.

Of course, Farcaster’s AI agents are still far from perfect or fully capable. On one hand, we can expect AI-focused companies to enhance foundational large model capabilities. On the other hand, more devs need to fully utilize the existing infra to unlock the potential of building AI agents. According to OpenAI’s classification of AI capabilities, AI agents are already exhibiting level 3 and 4 features in social media and DeFi, and in the future, more autonomous and intelligent AI agents could showcase innovative potential in areas like art and governance.

Here are some of my personal expectations for the development of AI agents in the Farcaster ecosystem:

• More AI Agent Frameworks and Tool Platforms will emerge to help devs and users build richer AI agents more easily and quickly within the Farcaster ecosystem. Currently, ai16z’s Eliza has integrated with Farcaster, and Coinbase has also launched the AgentKit framework to facilitate AI integration with onchain operations. I believe with the advent of more user-friendly AI agent construction tools, the quantity and variety of agents on Farcaster will become more diverse.

• Truly Autonomous AI Agents with Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) will emerge. Today’s AI agents are passively responding to human commands to complete specific tasks. Living within a TEE marks the beginning of AI agents’ autonomous actions, allowing them to manage their wallets without human intervention (automatically rewarding users or executing trades based on trading strategies) and interact using Farcaster accounts. @tee_hee_he has already started experimenting in this direction, and the Eliza Agent supports deployment in TEE. AI agents with goals and proactive actions are not too far off.

• AI Agents with Long-Text Processing Capabilities and Memory Systems will appear. Using RAG technology to retrieve and integrate open Farcaster data and other on-chain/off-chain data into vector databases, these agents will have access to a massive, continuously updated knowledge base. They will also be able to remember their interactions with each user.

5 Postscript

Farcaster in 2024 is worth documenting, it means a lot to me and many others. I’m also grateful to all the friends I’ve made through Farcaster over the past year. The main purpose of this article is to document my experience of Farcaster’s surprising year and provide a reference for anyone interested in exploring its ecosystem. Ideally, this article should have been published by the end of last year, but clearly, I overestimated my writing speed 😂. Of course, I may have still overlooked many points worth mentioning.

Now that we’re a week into 2025, the Farcaster ecosystem has once again emerged from its slump at the end of last month. Perhaps all my expectations will be disappointed, and every judgment may prove wrong, but some things are changing, and many things will remain the same. No one could have predicted all that would unfold on Farcaster in 2024 on the first day of the year, but I believe Farcaster in 2025 remains full of possibilities, with surprises still in store.

Still keeping optimistic, and imagining higher ↑