Assumption: a credibly neutral decentralized social networking protocol is desirable.In order to achieve "credibly neutral decentralization" for the protocol data it must be 1) replicated across many servers / nodes 2) user-controlled, i.e. the user does not have to rely on any other party to add / remove messages to the protocol 3) sign ups are permissionless.This means that anyone (or AI) can sign up for an account and post whatever they want at the protocol level. Any compromise on this ne...

Here's our rationale for shipping a wallet in Warpcast.Better UX in an app you use every dayMake onchain actions reliable and smooth directly from the feed—frames and token links. No app switching or deeplink bugs.Automatic onboardingNew users don’t need to download a separate app—it’s already there when you sign up. If you get a reward, a $degen tip or an airdrop in your first week, it just works.“Singapore of crypto”Today, Farcaster is much smaller than web2 social networks. However, if the...

Up until recently, blockspace was expensive and slow. In the last year, that's no longer the case. Also embedded wallets / smart contract wallets / Passkeys will continue to make it straightforward to make any crypto app aware. On-ramp APIs are also much better (but still the largest point of friction for a pure consumer app).It's 2024 — the consumer web is 30 years old and the modern smartphone era is almost 20 years old. Internet software is a mature industry. Obvious ideas (regardless of w...

I often see people say Farcaster isn't "sufficiently decentralized". You're free to define what "sufficiently decentralized" means to you, of course, but how we think about it is laid out in Varun's blog post:A social network achieves sufficient decentralization if two users can find each other and communicate, even if the rest of the network wants to prevent it. This implies that users can always reach their audience, which can only be true if developers can build many clients on the network...

Sharing how we think about spam so people can better understand.Who should you prioritize?1. Most people will only use social networks if they are fun 2. Casting something and getting dozens of spammy replies is not fun 3. If you get enough spammy replies, you'll just stop using the app 4. So, aggressively filtering for spam is necessary to keep your existing users happy 5. However, this means some good new users will hit spam filters. Understatement: this is a bad user experience for those p...

The value of an FID is in the social graph—both stated (following) and revealed (activity). Profile is secondary. There is minimal (no?) ...

1. We've said from the beginning, people will run Hubs without direct economic incentives. This has proven correct. 10K+ Hubs on the network.2. This ...

1. Gated polls based on criteria — you can only vote if... a. Onchain activity — age of wallet, token balance, holding an NFT b. Farc...

Useful to be precise here: "bots" is a catch all term that people use to describe low effort, uninteresting or otherwise off-topic content.However, a...

1. Lack of focus is kills startups; the number of things you can work on pre-product market fit is finite2. Settings after often (but not always) a s...

There has been discussion recently about bring your own algorithm (BYOA) for social networks. Here are some challenges:At-scale, world-class consumer...

A functioning app is a necessary condition, but one you have 100% control over. It is not sufficient. You then have 4 difficult problems to solve—at ...