The Farcaster Scenius Lexicon
A collection on the Zora Network to represent the dynamic and growing Farcaster scenius canon
Danica Swanson
2 min read·
Long known for its memorable memes (e.g., kiwi and wowow), the Farcaster (FC) community has also collectively hatched some fascinating terminology.
Ever since esteemed channel lead and GM Farcaster co-host Adrienne Shulman released her award-winning essay "The Power of Scenius: Farcaster and the Collective Genius of Communities" back in June, several word-nerd casters have taken up the task of tracking emergent Farcaster-specific lore and patterns of word use. Recently Adrienne and I teamed up for a project to chronicle the canonical Farcaster Scenius Lexicon memes and bring them onchain, and we're excited to share our early results as Zora Mints.
Our starter list as of December 2023:
- Conversational Liquidity Providers (CLPs)
- Before Farcaster/After Farcaster (BFC/AFC)
- Benevolent Dictator
Conversational Liquidity Providers (CLPs)
You don't need to be building an app to help Farcaster succeed. You just need to engage earnestly and wear your CLP badge proudly.
https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x49c385714b65d6deaac285891867fe500a0f3e65/1Background/origin:
"I still want Farcaster to succeed but I've decided running a hub isn't the best way.
I'm running with conversational liquidity provider instead." ~ @adrienne
"Conversational Liquidity Providers." ~ @ccarella (commenting on the top 30 active users as shown on Outcasters)
Search on Warpcast for conversational liquidity provider
What casters are saying:
"The conversational liquidity provider badge reminds us it's not just the developers adding value here.
"Someone has to keep this place engaging... the CLPs are the unsung heroes of Farcaster." ~ @adrienne
"CLPs contribute real value to the FC ecosystem." ~ @danicaswanson
"Incredible piece of terminology" ~ @maurelian
"conversational liquidity is a great meme, really makes you understand social networks as markets of creators and consumers" ~ @six
"When I grow up, my job description will be 'Conversation Liquidity Provider.'" ~ @vrypan
Before Farcaster/After Farcaster (BFC/AFC)
Farcaster changes you. If you plug into the Farcaster scenius and community in earnest, you may find your world shapeshifting into something more vibrant, connected, and creative.
https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x49c385714b65d6deaac285891867fe500a0f3e65/2Background/origin:
"@monkeydlinks.eth coined the terms BFC/AFC during gmfarcaster [...] Scenius at work." ~ @adrienne
Search on Warpcast for BFC + AFC
What casters are saying:
Before Farcaster: launch products = cold start problem
After Farcaster: launch products = bootstrap from FC audience ~ @ghostlinkz.eth
Before Farcaster: no high value interaction on any social platform
After Farcaster: quality discourse on a variety of topics in person & shared articles. ~ @sal1y.eth
Before Farcaster: Offchain art
After Farcaster: Onchain art. Found Zora ~ @j-valeska
Before Farcaster: was a degenerate
After Farcaster: still a degenerate ~ @cassie
Benevolent Dictator
Wielding mighty warps, boosts, and algorithms, Farcaster's benevolent dictator faithfully acts in service to the permissionless, interoperable future.
https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x49c385714b65d6deaac285891867fe500a0f3e65/3Background/origin:
If you were BDFOWF, what would you have us work on?
BDFOWF = benevolent dictator for one warpcast feature ~ @dwr
Note: benevolent dictator is, of course, not a Farcaster-specific term; it's widely used elsewhere. In FC contexts benevolent dictator typically refers to Dan Romero (@dwr), co-founder of Merkle Manufactory, but it's also used in more general ways, often as a web3 governance archetype.
Search on Warpcast for benevolent dictator
What casters are saying:
"@dwr.eth is Benevolent Dictator For Now of what shows up in Warpcast." ~ @horsefacts.eth
"He is a great benevolent dictator. At some point we'll have to help him to decentralize governance and culture :)" ~ @dhadrien.eth
"WHAT IS A BOOST" ~ @ted
"it's when dan flexes the benevolent dictator role" ~ @ivy
"...smaller accounts have lots of trouble getting engagement. If you were the benevolent dictator, how would you fix this?" ~ @nor
"Should we do an @unlonely stream called benevolent dictators?" ~ @markfishman
"The BDF!L (benevolent dictator but not for life) pattern is the single best idea in sociology of distributed systems but is really hard to pull off. When people are wary of BDFLing, they end up all waiting around for someone else to start. You must bind !L to a fixed epoch." ~ @vgr
Contribute to the Farcaster Scenius Lexicon
What other FC-specific words or phrases should be considered for the FC Scenius Lexicon? (Thank you to @six for calling attention to "Romerogorithm," coined by @nonlinear).
Comment or tag us on Farcaster (@adrienne or @danicaswanson) to let us know!
Thanks for reading! New here and want more context? Start with @cameron's canonical and much-appreciated article "Fast Rope Into Farcaster."
Correction: Originally we stated that "romerogorithm" was coined while we were working on this article. Thanks to @ghostlinkz.eth for finding via Searchcaster that it was actually coined in Sep. 2022.
Collect this post as an NFT.
Warpcast rewards but based on conversational liquidity provider score not engagement score.
would love but how
if I knew …
@kbc someone is calling for your skills!
How does that work
Warpcast rewards tracking engagement on replies/all casts would be a start
warpcast rewards but not requiring 1099 for crypto
Conversational liquidity provider? Tell us more
https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/the-farcaster-scenius-lexicon As it sounds… on social networks, who are the people who are enabling conversations?
exactly but theres no points for quality comments naaa
I genuinely thought this was how it worked and I was reply girl-ing but my score wasn't budging. I later figured out that it was based on cast engagements.
Today is the two-year anniversary of my Farcaster join date (Jan. 29, 2023). To celebrate, I’ll revisit something I wrote in 2024 about my experience here: “Right from the outset I knew I'd found my happy place. I settled in. I joined Paragraph. I bonded with other nerds. I learned the community lore. I made myself right at home in this cozy digital nest, grateful for the norms of kindness, the warm welcome given to my earnest word-nerd writing style, and the technical excellence on display every day.” “I'm fortunate enough to be here at a pivotal time. Knowing how rare it is to stumble upon a thriving scenius just by following a trail led by my interests and curiosity, I don't take a single minute of it for granted.” Farcaster is still the center of my digital + onchain life in 2025, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Recently I started working on a new CLP ("conversational liquidity provider") project for FC. Too early to say more, but I'll happily accept wishes for good luck. 😄
best place on the internet
It really is! I'm "spoiled" now and won't accept anything less... lol.
Sending you all the good luck!
Thank you... and while I'm at it, thanks for being a great CLP. 💜 Your work here is much appreciated!
Thank you so much! I like this new term.
100000 $goodluckwish 😉 you're one of the people keeping me here
What a kind thing to say, @y0b. Thank you so much for that. 💜 The appreciation is mutual.
Update on the open-source FC lore wiki idea: After talking it over with other casters and looking into the possibilities, I've decided not to forge ahead with the idea. I still think it's needed, and there's clearly lots of enthusiasm in the FC ecosystem for it, but I'm not the right person to spearhead it. However, since I’ve already written two pieces of FC lore… - The Farcaster Scenius Lexicon (collab with @adrienne) - “Clanker is a Goth” (a collection of clanker witticisms) …and I’ve also got a loosely organized collection of terms for the Moxie Dictionary, I’d love to contribute some lore from my collection if someone else decides to take up the mantle, so keep me in mind. Thanks for all the suggestions in the previous thread. Much appreciated. cc @pjc @bradq @vrypan.eth @proxystudio.eth https://warpcast.com/danicaswanson/0x24c88c91
For reference, here are my two lore posts: https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/the-farcaster-scenius-lexicon https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/clanker-is-a-goth
Thanks for the update. Yeah, tough project to get going. Would be fun and useful but time consuming and tough to fund.
*nod* The Farconomy still has a long way to go if we're ever to have truly sustainable funding models for culture projects like this, and for community-service types of maintenance labor like channel moderation. That said, I'm 100% here for the experiments, so feel free to tag me in future discussions about lore projects. If the Farconomy ever does figure out sustainable funding, I'd love to serve as an editor.
Both are equally important, IMO. Can you read this blog? https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/the-farcaster-scenius-lexicon It’s a piece @danicaswanson wrote about a project she and I collaborated on to document some of Farcasters growing lexicon, including the phrase conversational liquidity provider. If you can read it, I think you will very much enjoy it.
the whole tipping meta thing... is that what enables organic engagement and visibility on the Farcaster protocol? or is it just Warpcast? i confess, i don't understand how any of it works. i don't unerstand how it relates to "far score" and "openrank" and "boosting" and other farcaster social scores. and I don't know what the DEGEN and MOXIE and ENJOY ecosystems have to do with any of it. who can explain it all to me simply like i'm a 9th-grader?
It’s an economic layer of farcaster, that works outside of Warpcast. Degen = active tipping, the allocation amount is determined by a combination of locked degen (similar to staking) and open rank score Moxie = automatic gifting through engagement (like, comment, save, share), determined by a mix of open rank score, fan tokens purchased (value locked), and fan tokens locked (long term) As an artist & writer, I think they’re both great boosts to the ecosystem. Most people just get caught up in the spam nature of tipping culture. Personally, I use my degen intentionally every 2-3 days to give a big tip to someone who adds value to my time on farcaster
thank you for outlining the ecosystems. in general, i have my doubts about the value and promise of memecoin tipping. i don't see a future where these economies are sustainable. but i'm watching and learning. what i'm also interested in understanding more about is the purpose and role of the social ranking in these economic layers. and separately whether Warpcast uses them in any way to inform their algorithms on the platform.
Protocols and their tokens have long term value. Memecoins are dubious without some external valuable thing. I’m bullish on Moxie turning tipping into a protocol and bullish on Higher being an indie group of artists, athletes and creators doing cool shit without care of the token price. I’m not counting on either to make me rich but those are the two I’m studying.
As an example, I made enough money with degen in a few months to pay 3-4 months of mortgage payments. regardless of where the meta goes, the short term value enabled me to prioritize time writing and making art, building generally, which then (I hope) provides value back to the ecosystem. So I think there will be hype bubbles and the long term sustainability is a consideration, but also that the short term value can be augmented into long term ecosystem value Hmm not sure re: open rank, my assumption is there’s a trained machine learning algorithm for feeds
PSA for newcomers: this is the canonical "intro to Farcaster" article I always recommend to newbies first. Helpful and evergreen advice from @cameron on "how to hang with the smartest people on the internet." https://www.wysr.xyz/p/fast-rope-into-farcaster
What a great read! I’m fairly new on Farcaster and this is quite helpful, thank you! 💜 vibe is top notch, I don’t think I’ll ever find it anywhere else
Glad you found it helpful. I agree that there's nowhere else like this place. FC is my favorite place on the internet.
+1 | ✊🏻💯 (@cameron's goated essay - yes yes).
🥲
Thanks so much for sharing Danica!
This article is canonical for good reason! Glad to see it trending. I've long wished I could curate a custom selection of evergreen posts that help people get oriented to FC culture into a pinned list somewhere that would actually be *seen* regularly. Then I could just point to the list directly whenever I need it. I mean, bookmarks help, but there's still an unmet need for better discovery. I've shared your article more times than I can count. I've been doing some "hands-on" onboarding behind the scenes lately with a few of my non-crypto friends, and this piece consistently gets the most positive feedback from noobs. Thanks again for writing it.
That’s so awesome to hear!! Thank you for sharing it with folks. On a related note, do you have a list of the pieces you’d like to share with people? I might have something I can do here 👀
could do that with @frameboard but lacks distro imo could tag all your articles like that with specific tag and refer to that tag link on @paragraph
Captures the ideal caster and unironically describes @cameron our man
Agreed, and well said!
this is super kind of you to say 🫡
Thanks for sharing! On the first page I read that @cameron accidentally deleted lots of casts 🥲 now I'm grieving for those poor casts (I'm a preservation maxi of sorts). I'll do a slow read and continue later after this emotional start 😆 5 $RARE
I agree that preservation is important, though there's also a case to be made that not everything *should* be preserved. In any event, I think there's a "deleted casts" site somewhere. I know I've seen something like that before, though I don't recall how to find it. So don't fret too much in this case!
Nice read, need to improve my casting game. Thanks!
Great write-up! Def some helpful tips I could incorporate into my own casting. Bookmarked 🔖
Yeah, lots of good advice in there for newbies and seasoned casters alike. Did you read it when it was first released too? I remember you participated in the essay contest around the first FarCon, and this came out shortly afterward. A lot has changed since the article was released, yet pretty much everything he wrote is just as relevant now as it was then.
Hey, @homohugh ... ⬆️ next "baby steps" 1. Follow Danica! 2. Read what she shared here!
Nice write u there. Great job my success fam
think i may build a version of urban dictionary on top of farcaster. is anyone else doing this already? there are so many memes, phrases, moments, etc. inherent to crypto and the niche-ness is only amplified on farcaster. seems like a fun way to memorialize memetic moments and use the social graph / hub data.
This + an AI bot that reacts to a /explain cast command would be killer
would love something like this, was thinking about all the shared memes just yesterday!
bleuitful thoughts
Folback plz
good idea
knowyourmeme for crypto! cc @jamiew
she's back
Love it. This is how I'd build ... crowdsourced urban dictionary. Anyone can submit the words at a small value of 0.01 ETH. Everyone can vote their word of the day to be added to the dictionary. All the voters can pay $0.001 and mint the word as an NFT. 50% of the gains goes to the person who submitted the word.
oh I need this so bad!
crypto dictionary is needed
Conversational liquidity got a nice shout out from @dwr.eth in the latest /moz Good job all you CLPs 👏 keep that conversation going
I’m not a /replyguys I’m a conversational liquidity provider
So much better
Thanks for the heads-up! Need to give that podcast a listen. Maybe a good thing to mention in our next installment of the FC Scenius Lexicon.
Finding a way to use protocol earnings to possibly reward CLPs is an interesting idea.
Totally and I do identify more as a participant or CLP than a creator. Don’t forget about us Dan! We want those sweet sweet protocol reward someday 🤤
Bitcoin = Proof of Work Farcaster = Proof of CLP This is how im going to explain it to ppl now 😎
> joining fc changed the trajectory of my life ❤️
I love every time this recurring theme pops up on the timeline 🔥 @danicaswanson and I played with some short form writing on this topic but I wonder if anyone has written long form? There are such good stories about personal /professional growth to be told
I love the BFC/AFC theme too. Bet there are some long-form writings on it already, even if they don't use the acronyms from the original thread you started. As usual, I'm taking notes for our next installment in the series! It's much harder to track notable developments since the big influx, so I appreciate the tag.
For any newbies reading this thread, there's more on BFC/AFC and other Farcaster-native terminology here: https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/the-farcaster-scenius-lexicon/?referrer=danicaswanson.eth
Same. Maybe even saved it tbh.
Ditto 🫡
I can't believe how much my creative and technical style has changed since discovering @farcaster not even two weeks ago. I've been theorizing/looking for a social system like this since I first discovered blockchain in 2018 as part of a paper on solving fake news. Greatly appreciate the community here ✨
It’s cool that this is something that you can hang your hat on, Dan. You are a class act. And I’m glad to be a part of it. 1000 $DEGEN
We are also gaining traction here on this app. Thanks to you Dan! Keep up the amazing work
4000 $DEGEN
a good choice https://zora.co/collect/zora:0xcf43e11554e8307c375033c84f245ac85ca498e5
I love this.  It’s certainly abvery healthy culture where people actually care to support one another. The incentives are fantastic as well.  The team has done a great job with the launch So far.  Hopefully culture will be maintained with strong moderation efforts.
Can it change mine too
There is something like “minimum viable chat liquidity” for Farcaster channels You need enough people + casts to hit a critical mass My goal with /words is to hit 1000 people ASAP Then we’ll have enough folks sharing their work that people come hang in the channel to find new cool content Join up 😈
@adrienne calls the people you need CLP - chat liquidity providers I joined. For words!
Love it, followed you both 🙏
And if you like words, you might like to meet self proclaimed word nerd @danicaswanson She and I collaborated on this project to document farcaster lexicon, including Conversational Liquidity Provider https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/the-farcaster-scenius-lexicon
Followed the channel because I like words and I like writers and I write words. Do you also hang out in /writers ? The writer community might be fragmented leading to less conversation liquidity
Thanks for joining! Yeah I'm following that too 🙏
well planned —> well executed
hey hey. "A channel for content creators on the internet who use the written -> sword" sounds better.