Why I love Farcaster

Farcaster is new-ish social network built on the Ethereum blockchain. I joined in November 2022 and instantly became a daily active user.  Most people I talk to have never heard of it. I am writing this post to share my personal experience, explain why I think it’s a special place, and invite you to check it out. 

Before I ever heard about Farcaster, I was very active on Twitter.  The 3 main reasons I loved Twitter:

• Discovery & learning. It was by far the best place to learn about my favorite topics: tech, enterprise software, DevOps, crypto, AI, investing, wellness, mindfulness, science.

• Clarified & improved my thinking. The more I tweeted about my own personal and professional journey the better my thoughts evolved and took shape. Regurgitating things I was learning about helped me understand topics even deeper.

• Journaling and bookmarks. I loved having a written archive of things I had found interesting in the past; I used my twitter feed as an external hard drive or an old journal to refer back to.

But 2022 was the year when Twitter stopped being so valuable to me.  It was the year Elon purchased Twitter for $44B and in the 6 months before the deal closed, it was utter chaos.  I was no longer discovering interesting or useful content. Instead, my feed became entirely filled with people complaining about Elon and announcing they were leaving Twitter for any number of different platforms. Mastodon was most popular among my tech network.

I loved Twitter and I’ve always been a big Elon fan so I stuck around hoping the drama would subside and my experience would improve. But because I wasn’t getting value from the platform, I was open to finding an alternative.

Earlier in 2022 I had left my corporate job, a company I had worked at for more than 10 years and decided to give myself a few months to explore options.  During this time, I took a web3 full stack dev course to more deeply understand crypto, a topic I had been curious about and exploring on the side.  The course opened up my eyes even further to the benefits and promises that blockchain networks can bring, and during this time I started hearing about several twitter alternatives that were being built on top of decentralized technologies. I remember seeing mentions of Lens, Bluesky and Farcaster on my twitter feed.

There wasn’t a ton of information comparing the different options but someone I respect tweeted about Farcaster and it was enough to get me to try it.

Farcaster was still in beta at the time. To get an invite code you had to DM Farcaster founder Dan Romero on Twitter with a “link to something you built”. (Note: this is important! I'll come back to this later).  I felt like an imposter asking for an invite because I hadn't built a crypto app or didn't have deep crypto credentials, but I put together my plea and he sent me an invite. 

To get onboarded back then you had to download the app through TestFlight (Note: more on this later too).  TestFlight is Apple’s app that lets developers distribute beta versions of their apps to early users to test them out, before the apps are available in the app store to the general public.

I never used TestFlight before, so I had to first install Test Flight, and then I installed the Farcaster beta app through TestFlight.

Once the Farcaster beta app was installed, I used it to create a new account on Farcaster which involved spinning up a new Ethereum wallet. I got my seed phrase, wrote it on a piece of paper, and stored it away safely. The onboarding wasn't difficult for me at all because I had experience with other crypto apps but for the normal web user, it would have been really confusing. (Note: by the time you are reading this, the Farcaster onboarding experience does not require any crypto knowledge and you can register and onboard as easily as social networks you're already familiar with).

Once in Farcaster, it felt just like Twitter, so I knew what to do.  I started casting (Farcaster's equivalent to tweeting or posting). I replied to people. The names of the people I first remember interacting with were: Cameron, Samantha, Ted, Les, Kazi, DWR, Polluterofminds, tldr, Ivy. All people who are still very active today.

I was hooked. I kept coming back, day after day, scrolling the feed, casting, replying.

I've thought a lot about what exactly I found so special about Farcaster, and how and why I kept coming back and it comes down to 4 main reasons: 1.) builder vibe, 2.) people act like humans, 3.) URL to IRL pipeline, 4.) it's not dull.

More than anything I kept coming back to Farcaster because the people were interesting.  I didn't know a single person on Farcaster before I joined. And when I first came in, it seemed like everyone knew each other – like a tight knit circle of friends, and I was on the outside.  But I realized pretty quickly it wasn’t the case – most people had only met in Farcaster and didn’t know each other before.  I’m a natural pattern finder and I tried hard to find the pattern to figure out who these people were and what they had in common.  Did they all work in crypto? Were they all developers? Designers? Founders? Investors? Were they all Silicon Valley based? Were they all in their 20s, 30s, 40s? I tried to map them to existing communities I knew of elsewhere.  It broke my brain because I couldn’t find a common denominator. 

Then it hit me. Everyone identified as a builder.

A builder creates something that wouldn't exist in this world but for them and their effort. Whether it's software, an app, a website, a company, a brand, a blog, a poem, a meal, a photograph, a painting, a family.  True builders are inherently positive sum people. There was no one in Farcaster who was looking to extract value from someone else, they were all creating something new.

What bound people together was a value system.  Farcaster users didn’t vibe together because of who we were or what we do, but rather how we saw the world.  Builders are optimists.  Builders are generous.  Builders are confident and not threatened by scarcity or others.

The amazing builder vibes was not by accident. Remember Dan's requirement to get an invite into Farcaster was to tell him what you were building. I give Dan a ton of credit for seeding the early culture with this requirement.

Around the time I onboarded to Farcaster my mom was diagnosed with Pancreas cancer.  It was out of the blue.  She passed away within 4 months of her diagnosis.  It was a brutal time for me. I was driving back and forth from NY to PA several times a week.  I was in crisis mode trying to understand the disease and figuring out what to do to help her beat it.  So much was out of my control. 

Farcaster was a surprising oasis for me. A place to connect with people on a human level.  I wrote about her illness, my processing of it, and my grief after her passing. People were incredibly kind and empathetic.  Not what you’d expect from social media.  I’ll never know for sure, but I have a suspicion that Farcaster filled a need at a time when my brain was elastic and created a foundation and love that is now permanent.

The third thing that makes Farcaster special is something we started calling the URL to IRL pipeline: creating relationships first online and then bringing them into the real world.

Farcaster looks a lot like other social media platforms – there is a user profile where you can upload a PFP (profile pic), a place to write a short bio, and a twitter-like feed where you can post updates.  What was different is that most people’s PFPs were graphic avatars, not pictures of themselves.  When you meet someone in real life, the first thing you do is take in all sorts of visual cues.  Hair style, clothing, shoes, skin color, height, age, accent, – all things you can take in and make quick assumptions about the person in front of you.  When you meet someone for the first time what do you ask but “What do you do?” On Farcaster it’s different.  I was meeting people based on their words and thoughts about topics.  I became friends with people because of their ideas and thoughts without knowing anything about them.

I remember the first person who reached out and asked me to jump on a zoom.  It felt a little odd because that wasn't happening on other social media sites I was active on, but I said sure.  I had a 30-minute conversation with tldr and we just got to know each other.  No expectations. He wasn’t trying to get anything from me.  We just got to know each other.  I’ve since had at least a dozen zoom calls with people on the feed. 

I went to the NFT NYC meetup in 2023.  It was a little weird. I am in my mid 40s. I am a suburban mom.  Most people were in their 20s and 30s but the energy was awesome. I met Ted and Matthew and J4ck and Papa and many others for the first time. 

I then went to FarCon in Boston.  That also felt weird.  Traveling to a different city to meet 70 internet strangers.  But it was so worth it. I met Nounish Prof who would later become my cofounder and business partner.

Farcaster was still in beta for most of my first year. Only in late 2023 did it become permissionless where anyone could sign up. Even today with tens of thousands of daily active users, Farcaster is still at small platform that has not found product market fit.

But there's an upside to hanging out in an emergent space. It's exciting and energizing. It's constantly and continuously changing. It’s also where founders of other new apps and services are launching their products to get feedback.  As I wrote above, I hadn't even heard of TestFlight before Farcaster and now I have a dozen apps because I'm helping founders test their early versions. On Farcaster I’m getting a front row seat to crypto builders.

I've been a daily active user on Farcaster since my first day. I came in not knowing a single person. The builder vibes and strong human connections keep me coming back day after day.

At the time of this writing, about 18 months after first joining Farcaster, I have almost 100k followers, I've made dozens of new friends, and I am building a new media business with a cofounder I met on Farcaster.

If your experience on other social media sites has gotten worse over the years, like how my Twitter experience degraded, if you're looking for a more wholesome corner of the internet, or a place to meet interesting and kind people, I encourage you to check out Farcaster.

Ways to get on Farcaster:

• Use this link with an invitation to check our Farcaster: https://warpcast.com/~/invite-page/5818?id=f280ec84

• Download the Warpcast app from the AppStore for iOS or Android

• It costs ~$5 /year to use Farcaster. If we are connected on another platform, feel free to DM me for a code and I'll cover the cost of your first year.

I wrote this essay as part of the first Farcaster Writing Hackathon. If you have any questions or you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here or find me on X and farcaster.