2+ Weeks.
Yeah, you read that right. It's been over 2 weeks since I lost my shiny, purple, super-duper-electric icon on the side of my name.
Now, the real question is: who the hell cares?
Honestly, I asked myself the same question. When I first lost the badge, it really wasn't a big deal.
Until it began to affect the overall experience of how I interacted with Warpcast, a native client on Farcaster's decentralized protocol.
So let's dive into my adventure of being a badgeless nomad, shall we?
What is a Power Badge?
First, let's do a quick TLDR of what a badge is.
It's something given to "users who are active, interesting to others and not spammy."
Kind of like X's (Twitter) verified badge. Except without the paywall.
According to Warpcast, a power badge grants you the following:
Have a little badge on your profile.
Rank higher in search results.
Can cast (term for post) in channels that are restricted to badge holders.
Are more likely to be recommended as someone to follow.
Basically, you get more engagement / interactions on your casts because the algorithm loves you.
Okay. Back to the scheduled program.
The Inception
It all started a week or so after FarCon, my absolute favorite convention that I went to this year. ~500 attendees who believed in the future of SocialFi, all in the same place. Vibes were immaculate.
But not too long after, I suddenly notice something different on my profile...
It turns out I wasn't shadow-banned, but my engagement was less and I was confused.
Me? An active and contributing user to the platform, removed by the algorithm. For what reason?
So I reached out to Dan, co-founder of Farcaster / Warpcast for further comment.
His answer was fair, as it directly correlated with the second point, Affinity.
But here's the issue: I already had a significant amount of engagement from other power badge users (PBUs), and continued to get a solid amount of interactions from PBUs daily after my badge was taken away.
So...I passed?...But I failed?...
The Frustration
During this season of my time in crypto, I spend a lot more time in the Farcaster ecosystem.
For someone who is so active on Warpcast, it became frustrating to see how I wasn't added on any of the trending tabs, so it wasn't even worth posting in channels anymore.
Fortunately, I have a wonderful community of homies who still interacted with my casts because they enjoyed my content (which still applies to this day and am very grateful).
But for those who recently joined Warpcast but could not grow their accounts, seemed like a massive obstacle that was being caused by the power badge / algorithm.
Meanwhile, there are users who are just spewing casts (giveaways, spamming key words, etc.) and are being rewarded by the algorithm for content which lacks quality.
Let me be clear that there's nothing wrong with engagement farming here or there. But by making that your complete profile, you add nothing of value.
The Decision
A week passed, and no badge update. So I decided to try to find an alternative:
Now, post notifications on Warpcast aren't the cleanest, I've experienced some bugs. However, they are the best immediate solution, and it helps ensure that people who enjoy seeing my casts can have a higher chance of visibility on their end.
Earlier that day, I had reached out to Varun and asked to speak with him because his DMs were closed. Only, I wasn't able to get a hold of him, because without a badge, you aren't prioritized, and the user is not notified.
So I asked Sam to help me with visibility, which did the job.
I explained to Varun my side of the story, to which he responded:
Very cool, the team fully knows what's up. I was happy that he took the time to read my long message.
Not too long after, I was added to a group chat called "Badgeless" by DownShift, which contained a handful of users who also had their badges taken away or had never received one before. A sub-community was formed as a result of this persisting issue, and I was all for it.
Geoff Golberg, a member of the Badgeless group chat, goes extremely in-depth of the struggles of the Power Badge algorithm -- you can check it out here.
The Conclusion
Yesterday, I (and others) actually received my badge -- for about 6 hours. Then it randomly went bye-bye.
And that's where we are at right now. Onto the third week of being without a badge. But that won't push me away from the future of Farcaster / Warpcast.
This will most probably be the last time I'll ever talk about this issue, because everything has already been said, and the team is already aware of the situation. Just something I hope gets fixed soon. My goal was to share my side of how everything went from A to Z.
And I did.
HASTA LA VISTA, BABY. 😎
