Like many Farcaster users, I was swept up in the Degen frenzy earlier this year. Amid the excitement, I kept thinking there was an opportunity for a Farcaster-native token that offered branding and ideas not steeped in degenerate crypto culture, and could appeal more to people attracted to Farcaster specifically for its potential to improve social media.
This was the initial idea behind Farther. I branded as a Farcaster evangelist token, launched by airdropping it to power users, and didn't set an initial price. I explicitly said it had no intrinsic value and let airdrop recipients decide what it was worth.
While I was reluctant to follow Degen's path by launching tipping, the Farther evangelist program (tweet for token rewards) wasn't very effective. It was clear tipping was at the top of the list of things Farcaster users were excited about, so I built a tipping system for Farther. I now believe this was a mistake.
What I'm about to write will likely be obvious to some, blasphemous to others:
In my view, most (all?) Farcaster tipping tokens aren't sustainable. They require massive inflation and create constant sell pressure that can only be temporarily countered during a perfect speculative storm like Degen experienced. Eventually the music stops.
Farther has recently been allocating out about 5 million tokens per day in tip allowances. That's ~150 million per month, which is 15% of the total supply. That might work if the number of holders is quickly growing and nobody is selling, but the majority of these tokens are allocated to existing $farther holders, and the majority of the tokens get swapped for more stable assets as soon as they're claimed.
It doesn't help that there are many similar tipping tokens and Farcaster's active users has declined since Farther launched. Many tippers have been getting marked as spam accounts, which leads them into tip trading echo chambers. This is all the opposite of what I was trying to build with Farther.
All these realizations led to Farther V2, which essentially turns each tip into a bet in a prediction market on the social capital of the recipient. The hope behind this was if tips could be imbued with more tangible value, it could provide a path to fixing the economic model. This was a long shot, but the combination of Farcaster and OpenRank seemed like a fresh design space where tips could be used to boost engagement for underrated users and potentially reduce user churn. If enough of the Farther community bought into this vision, I thought it buy some time to transition to bringing more of the system onchain and make tips paid directly by tippers.
The V2 design has mostly been a success. While not perfect, it has shown good results in only a few weeks. Veteran tippers earnestly giving the most to underrated users outside of the Farther community have risen to the top of the leaderboard.
But I unfortunately overestimated the community's appreciation of the need to fix the economic model. Most tippers simply want to trade tips with each other so they can cash out at the end of each month. All attempts to restrain this behavior has been met with frustration and large amounts of selling (see replies here).
FartherDAO
Despite the trajectory so far, I still think Farther has potential. The community is active, the token still has some value, most of the supply isn't in circulation yet, and the V2 scoring system seems to be working.
But given my increasing feeling of misalignment with the community, not to mention the large amount of time and money I've already spent on the project, I think the most ethical path is to turn it over to the community through a DAO.
This is the plan:
I've already burned the Uniswap LP tokens so liquidity stays permanently locked.
Tip allowances will pause indefinitely after the current cycle, ending tomorrow at 9am PDT.
Liquidity bonus rewards will also stop. The onchain incentive program will continue until its scheduled end (Oct 27, 2024).
Snapshots for August claims will be made within the next two days and claims will go live shortly after. As announced last week, claims will use Sablier airstreams that linearly vest over 30 days.
FartherDAO has been deployed. I encourage developers to review its code (tests here). It uses Governor.sol with minimal changes. It was deployed with a 1-day voting delay, 1-week voting period, and 100k $farther proposal threshold. If I don't receive any messages alerting me to bugs or concerns about the initial parameters, I will send all the treasury funds (except the founder allocation) to it one week from today.
The founder allocation is also being streamed by Sablier, linearly vesting until August 2026.
In the event that the community decides to burn the treasury tokens to remove them from future circulation and wants the same done with the founder allocation, I will do so.
If not, the founder allocation can remain available for someone interested in taking over the project. I'm open to purchase offers that would include all the assets (github repo, database, domain, @farther account, etc).
In the meantime, I can help orchestrate any proposals & votes on how to move forward. I can also post token-gated polls in the channel.
Anyone who knows me knows I'm obsessed with Farcaster and want to do everything possible to help make it succeed. I'm hoping Farther can still be a part of that.
Huge thank you to everyone who believed in this project, especially those of you who have given positive feedback and encouragement along the way.
