Farcaster: Where Crypto-Native Innovators Shape the Future
Some recent thoughts on growing Farcaster
Jonathan Colton
1 min read·
Dan Romero's @dwr.eth reframing of Farcaster as "social + crypto wallets + programmability" is a significant step forward, highlighting the platform's emergent properties and appeal to crypto-native innovators. This idea can be distilled into a simple message: “Grow with Crypto.”
Not everyone needs or wants a new social network. However, innovators—those who value experimentation, risk-taking, and being ahead of the curve—do. Farcaster is uniquely positioned to attract these early adopters, offering artists, creators, and builders an unmatched opportunity to shape the future of digital interaction.
Key Challenges and Solutions
Target Audience Mismatch
Innovators are the core DAU of Farcaster. However current onboarding efforts lack a clear focus on this audience. Broad word-of-mouth campaigns miss the nuance, leading to adoption and retention challenges.Solution: Equip existing users to invite the right friends by clarifying the target audience and their attributes (e.g., risk-takers, builders, artists). Use prompts like, "Which of your friends thrives in fast-changing, experimental spaces, or which of your friends wants to be the first to try something new?"
Value Proposition Communication
Farcaster’s unique value—better engagement, monetization with low take rates, ownership of the social graph, and an innovation-centric culture—isn’t immediately clear to potential newcomers. The high switching costs from traditional platforms make this a barrier.Solution: Amplify user testimonials in outbound communication, e.g.:
“Engagement here with 70 followers is better than on X with 140k followers.” @artvisionnft
Highlight rapid growth stories, like new users gaining 100 followers in days with meaningful interactions.
User stories of earnings from tips, moxie, subscriptions, and token trading add social proof to the monetization they're not getting on other platforms. Jason @betashop.eth regularly shares this social proof. https://warpcast.com/betashop.eth/0x1642b540
Frame these stories as proof of Farcaster's superior culture and distribution.
Retention of Non-Innovators
Non-innovators struggle with Farcaster’s rapid evolution and experimental nature, leading to low retention. This audience shouldn’t be the focus now.Solution: Double down on attracting and retaining innovators who align with Farcaster’s pace and culture. Early adopters and non-innovators can be targeted later as the ecosystem matures.
Refined Messaging for Innovators
To resonate with artists, creators, and builders, the messaging should emphasize:
Distribution: “Get meaningful engagement with a fraction of the audience size.”
Community: “Collaborate with like-minded innovators in an ever-evolving space.”
Status: “Join a circle of crypto-native pioneers shaping the future.”
Monetization: “Own your audience and create new revenue streams.”
By refining this approach, Farcaster can strengthen its position as the social network of choice for crypto-native innovators ready to build, experiment, and shape the future. Let’s focus on messaging that makes innovators feel seen, valued, and excited to join.
farcaster is and should be the place where onchain culture and ideas originate, then go mainstream.
from farcaster to the world.
This is it.
i love this take
̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶g̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶i̶n̶s̶t̶r̶e̶a̶m̶
this is very true!
Farcaster to the freaking world
you know it! it's mostly my world anyways hehe
hard agree!
/artcoin will fix it
a social incubator
🎩
Consumer social products and marketing 1. Marketing creates 1) awareness and, hopefully, 2) demand to sign up 2. For nearly all consumer apps, ~50% of new sign ups never come back to the app after the first day! This declines over the next 30 days to get to a measure of day 30 (d30) retention. 3. Ideally, this decline curve “flattens” (i.e. asymptotic) or even “smiles”. This means you have a retentive product and you can measure $X spent turns into Y downloads and into Z sign ups and into A retained users. 4. However, if your product does not have a retentive curve, then all spending will do is make metrics go up for a bit and then air will slowly come out of the balloon. 5. Retentive social products work because their core value proposition and product / functionality / features creates long-term retention. Exceptional products do that and have a viral growth component (k-factor). 6. So before spending time and money marketing, be sure you have a product that benefits from the marketing.
Related reading https://warpcast.com/dwr.eth/0x97bb234d https://articles.sequoiacap.com/retention
Users forget about you the minute they have left your app. You are growing Farcaster through Warpcast, and Warpcast Product Manager should work, IMHO, on user retention through specific features that aim at getting a mobile user to open up the app again. Let’s not call that marketing if it feels better.
1. That's not marketing, it's product. 2. We send many notifications to bring people back to the app. 3. Sending notifications and other retention features don't just magically create retention. :)
Let’s just not categorise it 😅 Maybe the push notifications are not the triggering one, maybe people don’t find their tribe here 🤷🏻♂️😢
You're 4+ years in and you don't think you have a product that warrants people staying?
No! If we had one that consistently created retention I would be spending my time differently. We've had brief periods where it seemed like it was working but they have never stuck. Thus, back to the grind.
Fair enough. Keep upping the weekly reward money and you'll get there.
10x funding to the existing and new builders, make them rich, they will bring retention up. most socials had to do it eventually to continue to grow. product improvements are never ending, you do it not to die, not necessarily to grow.
Tbh this is a controversial take that shouldn’t be controversial
What was the last retentive social product?
TikTok
TikTok had a new and novel form favor (short form supercut video) that made it unique. Similar to Snapchat (stories/ephemeral messaging) and other notable social media platforms that retained users. Do you think Farcaster needs a new and novel form factor to onboard and retain users?
two qs how do you model the fact that most of your target audience is on a singular alternative platform? (i.e. you know who they are and where to find them again) considering that crypto social is a lot more financialized, do you think web2 user acq frameworks apply cleanly?
1. Makes it harder, especially if your UX is mostly a derivative of said platform. The more we diverge from X / Twitter, the better for Farcaster. That said, the differentiation needs to yield sufficiently interesting content / experiences. 2. Retention is retention whether web2 or web3. You can only create durable value if users stick around.
at the sf farcaster meetup some other techies came up to us to ask what meetup it was and we were all like FARCASTER and they were like whazzat and we mumbled "ᶜʳʸᵖᵗᵒ ᵗʷᶦᵗᵗᵉʳ" what would be a better way to shorthand describe farcaster?
questions are more around the role of kickstarting viral loops to generate engagement and thus interesting content it seems your model is full utility value with no concept of giving yourself as many chances to get lucky obv too many founders rely too heavily on the latter but there’s still truth to the approach
Add to that the fact that sometimes you need to onboard a whole group of people at the same time in order for them to stay and feel the pain (or call Harry - @nikitabier - Potter)
I initially thought this was a brachistochrone curve illustration, and in a way I wasn’t that far off
Retention. Retention. Retention. I really believe need FC short form video and truly better algos (state of the art ML with online learning & smart exploration). Also when you have it you can start hyper personalising notifications (where you are, which device, which client, which WiFi even, what time of day, weather). This is the big update we will push for @mbd models - support for contextual features. There is critical social graph mass for doing this training for some segments on FC @dwr.eth.
> I really believe need FC short form video and truly better algos (state of the art ML with online learning & smart exploration). You need your user based to skew as video creators for that to be useful.
Right… will be a tough 0 to 1 again but worth it (?) - also I realised some +20-30% reels and TikTok’s are AI generated now… it is getting easier and easier to become a video creator using AI so thinking everyone will be doing it soon. I just tried zebracat.ai , photoAI.com, getglam.app today and will be producing video content now for sure.
Shoutout the great Alex Schultz for teaching me this
Some valuable thoughts from @jonathancolton on growing Farcaster All valid imo, he makes a good point that this is the time to onboard innovators and friends who thrive in rapid moving and experimental spaces 💯 This is how we achieve /success! https://paragraph.xyz/@jonathancolton.eth/farcaster-where-crypto-native-innovators-shape-the-future
Great read!
I agree, JC makes very good points
Thank you for sharing this Asha!
It's a great write-up. And I agree 100% with everything. First people to onboard should be people inclined to experimental stuff, otherwise we lose them. And spending time and resources to bring people we might lose very fast is definitely not the way 😅
🎯
wow! Great 👏 👏
Very cool read
Right? Makes perfect sense
Thanks for sharing 💖
Great work 💓💓
@farcaster isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. It’s for innovators, especially those focused on on-chain innovation. To resonate with artists, creators, and builders, the messaging should emphasize: Distribution: “Get meaningful engagement with a fraction of the audience size.” Community: “Collaborate with like-minded innovators in an ever-evolving space.” Status: “Join a circle of crypto-native pioneers shaping the future.” Monetization: “Own your audience and create new revenue streams.” By refining this approach, Farcaster can strengthen its position as the social network of choice for crypto-native innovators ready to build, experiment, and shape the future. Let’s focus on messaging that makes innovators feel seen, valued, and excited to join. https://paragraph.xyz/@jonathancolton.eth/farcaster-where-crypto-native-innovators-shape-the-future?referrer=0xe19753f803790D5A524D1fD710D8a6D821a8Bb55
This is it 💯
Feeling seen and valued gives us the motivation to grow.
Thanks for sharing 🙏
That's good 🧡
We need to get the next 'right' 100K DAUs. @jonathancolton has the most compelling marketing strategy I have read to achieve. I will certainly copy & paste some taglines to attract my circles and I hope @dwr.eth does so, too.
This is excellent. Thx for sharing.
so on point. Always looked at FC as potentially a way to attract other builders
Farcaster’s value prop for innovators: Distribution: “Get meaningful engagement with a fraction of the audience size.” Community: “Collaborate with like-minded innovators in an ever-evolving space.” Status: “Join a circle of crypto-native pioneers shaping the future.” Monetization: “Own your audience and create new revenue streams.” @jonathancolton nails it 🎯 Read the rest: https://paragraph.xyz/@jonathancolton.eth/farcaster-where-crypto-native-innovators-shape-the-future
Some great thoughts by @jonathancolton on how “growth” can be crypto’s universally appealing USP https://paragraph.xyz/@jonathancolton.eth/farcaster-where-crypto-native-innovators-shape-the-future
Thank you for sharing this @betashop.eth
It’s a good thinking angle Jonathan 👍 Could be an interesting experiment, although that audience intersection is small, maybe too small 🤔
Bookmarked it 🤞
My tokens haven't been added to my wallet even after claiming today 💔
Will be processed shortly
Okay. Thanks, I will be waiting @eticodeh4u has the same issue
Wow, really interesting and useful. Thanks 💜🙏🏻
@betashop.eth @moxie.eth /airstack Request for Token Recovery Assistance Dear Jason Goldberg , I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to request your assistance with an issue related to a pre-purchase transaction of fan tokens through the Farcaster platform. Unfortunately, a certain amount of Moxie tokens was deducted from my wallet, but due to what appears to be an incomplete transaction, I was unable to participate in the pre-purchase, and the deducted tokens have not been returned to my wallet. Details of the transaction are as follows: - **Wallet Address:** [0x74a3486C63Fe28CacFaF18d43B76CE746CD233D7] - **Transaction ID:** [0x7a3c614ac1b66a43eefed9e88138226965ff11fd957077b4d57ae2866690774c] - **Amount Deducted:** [60,000] - **Date of Transaction:** [Nov 20 , 2024 at 9:06 PM ] Please help me resolve this issue and return the tokens to my wallet. I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. Thank you. Best regards, Emma Smith
Great read and thoughtfully executed and properly explained, readable and inspiring piece from a good dude that has been instrumental for me personally trying to navigate and find a niche and direction on this @farcaster platform. JC always makes time for me whether it's explaining, complimenting, suggesting techniques or equipment, or just shooting the shiznog cause we bros, yo. Appreciate you @jonathancolton and all the hats you wear, and well. Happy Thanksgiving my man and you are an impressive intellectual and technological wizard @betashop.eth Happy Holidays man.
You are too kind, Captain! Happy Thanksgiving.
@jonathancolton perspective on crypto always seems to get more diverse the more I think I start to understand and gosh is that not amazing
@dwr.eth's reframing of Farcaster as "social + crypto wallets + programmability" is a significant step forward, highlighting the platform's emergent properties and appeal to crypto-native innovators. This idea can be distilled into a simple message: “Grow with Crypto.” Not everyone needs or wants a new social network. However, innovators—those who value experimentation, risk-taking, and being ahead of the curve—do. Farcaster is uniquely positioned to attract these early adopters, offering artists, creators, and builders an unmatched opportunity to shape the future of digital interaction. CC: @dwr.eth @v @betashop.eth @ipeciura.eth https://paragraph.xyz/@jonathancolton.eth/farcaster-where-crypto-native-innovators-shape-the-future
This is excellent and I've bookmarked to consider more later. In whatever I'm doing, I'm always thinking what is the current story here and what should that story be? You present a new specific story for FC. My daily default is that FC as a whole (team & community) are not telling the story well to the right audience. I've dabbled with a correction, but never took the time to put it on paper. You did. And you've given 1 well-articulated option. It makes me want to go back to it and work on fleshing out that story and see if it 'works.' Great work. 👊 🫡
thank you my man!