Plenty has been written about what Farcaster is already. You can find articles everywhere about it. This article is my onboarding guide to Farcaster culture, how to skip the learning curve and "Fast Rope Into Farcaster".

My account isn't massive, but I have managed to carve out a niche for myself as a gamooooooor and /tabletop aficionado on the network. I'll walk you through how to wrap your head around Farcaster for content and revealed preference and why getting your Active Power Badge matters.

Part 2 Unlocking Potential on Farcaster discusses some content I've found success with, what the heck $DEGEN is, and how to boost your reach leveraging frames and power user tools.

Unlocking Potential on Farcaster

Tips and tricks for going farther and growing more as a content creator on Farcaster. Guess what? Everyone's a content creator.....

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Farcaster Architecture

Users can post all kinds of data to the Farcaster network and have it attributed to their accounts through the "sufficiently decentralized" signature model Farcaster uses. Meaning there are multiple ways to save and present data.

But there are familiar views and mental models that we can use to orient ourselves on Farcaster. The Warpcast app combines some of the best features from other social networks: Twitter feed, Telegram chat groups, and subreddits for focused content.

Warpcast Feed is Twitter

The main feed on Warpcast is a Twitter-like interface. It has familiar ways to interact with other users through liking, commenting, and recasting/quote casting.

Warpcast Group Chats are Telegram Groups

Telegram-like group chats can be created by manually adding users who follow you to the group or inviting them via link (with or without token-gating). Group chats have the most-used Telegram chat features like reply and react to keep multi-threaded conversation moving.

Warpcast Channels are Subreddits

Finally, channels on Warpcast serve as places to focus content around a topic, allowing channel leads to have recurring interactions with channel followers (subreddit members) and an audience through relationships. @cameron has some great thoughts on channels:

Channels: Genesis

The Birth of a New Content Medium?

https://www.wysr.xyz

Channels offer Creators a brand new content MEDIUM that doesn't really exist elsewhere.

A Twitter account follow CAN'T compete with a co-created feed of culture/jokes/memes between a personality and their community because Twitter's algo isn't concentrated enough to keep people clustered together for sustained community, a Telegram channel has zero distribution, but a subreddit requires waaaaay too much work and effort to keep fresh.

Channels neatly sidestep the concentration, distribution, AND upkeep problem.

... a quasi-permanent stream of [the creator's] content [is] always flowing directly to their fans too.

All activity boosts users in the Warpcast algorithm, and the familiar method of having an off-platform hype squad to pile onto content and boost in the feed still applies. Band together with other Farcasters to strengthen your power together, form a community together!

Farcaster has, at its core, a culture of earnest honesty and vulnerability stemming from the many /founders and YC folks that the Farcaster team cultivated in the early days.

Revealed Preference

As I shared in my previous article, "just push send" is a constant reminder for myself on social. Throw content out and let the audience reveal itself. Cast a lot in lots of places related to your interests and see what hits.

F**k Around and Find Out

In case you missed it, last post that went out talked through how to keep a large web3 Discord server secure and safe for all. Here are the biggest t...

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Farcaster (and life) runs on revealed preference, it can be very difficult to predict what people want, and they often lie to you and to themselves about what they would choose. Would you rather buy that book you've been meaning to read or have one more trip to Starbucks?

What people say (stated preference) often doesn't match what they actually choose to do (revealed preference). So, to discover an audience on Farcaster, cast a lot and let your audience reveal their preferences to you by how they react to your content.

Two main acronyms to remember with Farcaster:

1. AVA - Add Value Always

   • Farcaster is about earnest human interactions, we should lean into that and find ways to add value to conversations and the spaces we inhabit

   • Make the feed better than you found it and be valueful 🧡

     • Check out /poop if you want to clean up the feed

   • Vulnerability is cherished on Farcaster

2. ABC - Always Be Casting

   • Throw your content to the wind and see: what sticks, what builds your audience with people, and how people reveal their preferences to you about your content

   • h/t to @sheldon for this gif

   

   • because Coffee is for Casters, mint the meme on Zora

Get your Active Power Badge

Varun Srinivasan on Warpcast

The active badge is going away. Spammy accounts are aggressively gaming the system to get the badge. Making the rules stricter just makes it harder for legitimate users. We’re past the point where a simple rule based system will work. We need something better.

Farcaster

Unleash Your Influence on Farcaster: Get the Exclusive Power Badge

The Warpcast Power Badge is a marker of influence on Farcaster. This purple badge, displayed next to your name, signifies that you are a power user, ...

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Connect an Ethereum Address

Connecting an address isn't just for Active Power Badge, you can mint NFTs directly from the Farcaster feed via frames to the primary connected address. Or claim airdrops and use the new transaction frames, social identity 🤝 crypto wallets.

Another cool thing is that you can use an ENS name as your handle on Farcaster if your connected Ethereum address is registered as the primary address via ENS! e.g. ispeaknerd.eth

The security conscious can use a workaround of creating a subdomain from their main ENS like social.ispeaknerd.eth to use for social presence. If nothing else, you should set the ETH Address to point to the address you want to use, likely a hot wallet for convenience, but use a hardware wallet for the Owner to keep your ENS name secure.

If you enjoyed this,

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