Farcaster Community Badges
Unlocking Stacked Emojis: A Dive Into Farcaster Community Identity
PiChi
2 min readยท
If you've hung out on Farcaster, you must have noticed that many people have emojis in their name. Some have deep meanings and some are just for fun, but almost all represent something very important on the platform: community.
At first glance, these emojis may just look like emojis, but most of them reflect specific communities in the ecosystem and are used to signal to other users what communities you are a part of and interact with regularly.
The earliest known use of an emoji to signify community comes from Purple DAO, a Farcaster native DAO built to promote the Farcaster ecosystem. Many users of the DAO rock a in their name to signify that they own a Purple Token and are committed to the future of the Farcaster ecosystem.
On Feb 14, 2024 if you had the emoji your name, you got One Million $DEGEN to tip. However, if you removed it the next day, your tips were invalid. A grass roots gorilla marketing campaign began to remind everyone to keep the emoji in their name and โthe hat stays onโ meme was born. Many members of The Haberdashery aka Degen DAO also use the emoji to signify their membership in the DAO and their commitment to growing the degen ecosystem.
When "Ham" tipping came online in late February, many users who owned the LP NFTS added the ๐ emoji, which is the official tipping mechanism for Ham (aka $TN100X tokens) to their names to show support for the project. If you owned an original LP NFT, which was on the ETH network, you were able to stake your airdrop of $TN100X (which we got from holding the NFTs) via "baking golden hams" for 45 days. At the end of the "baking" phase after token claims, emoji tipping via the ๐ emoji began and a new community badge came into existence, but there were some issues.
While much of Farcaster is English speaking, there is a huge contingent of Japanese speakers on and many of them joined the Ham community early and were large contributors to the culture. The word emoji comes from Japanese e (็ตต, 'picture') + moji (ๆๅญ, 'character'), so almost all of the emojis we know and love today come from Japan. The ๐ emoji in Japan is the "ano niku" emoji, in English "that meat". The Japanese members of the community were VERY confused as to why we were calling the meat emoji a "ham" and didn't understand why their posts about meat were not in the spirit of the "ham memes" encouraged in the channel.
Leaders from the Japanese speaking community got creative with explaining "ham" and used a well known anime in Japan called Hamtaro. The series focuses on a hamster named Hamtaro, who has a variety of adventures with other hamsters known as the "Ham-Hams" or "Hamuchanzu" in Japanese. They adopted the hamster emoji as their ๐น badge and call themselves the Hamuchanzu! Due to this creativity and helping bridge two cultures, you'll now find lots of memes and art in the channel featuring the LP, hams, hamsters, and all of the Floaties (other emojis that trigger real payments on Farcaster and Twitter) in the channel.
Ham was the first to use emojis as tips, but many other projects have been inspired by it and embraced their own emoji tipping systems. Some projects are also using emojis to help users recognize members of the team or those who identify strongly with the community. The above are just a few of the community badges you may see on Farcaster. Know another community with a great story of their community badge? Please let me know!
PS: I'm a member of The Haberdashery , Purple DAO , host the /sakura ๐ธ channel, I am the unofficial Hambassador ๐, an honorary Hamuchanzu ๐น, and the host of the /anime-manga ๐กchannel, which are all reflected in my Farcaster profile.
Pichi ๐ฉ ๐ช ๐๐น๐ก๐ธ (@pichi) on Farcaster
Pi-chi.eth (she/her) /animeoutcasts Unofficial Hambassasor |General of the North /kyoto /sakura /anime-manga https://beacons.ai/pi_chi
I need base
so much to learn lol
My pfp plushie gets to go on so many cool adventures thanks to @nato-san!!
This summer, your alter ego is going out to many places! There are a lot of photos of adventures that you don't know on my smartphone!๐ But she got a little dirty๐ I have to do maintenance!
She is living her best life! 6700 $HUNT 50000 $BETR
@nato-san, you just received 6,700 applause from @pichi for being a based builder ๐ ๐ Today's Current Rank: 7th ๐ Claps to Next Rank: 1,400 The Hunt Town Grant is a daily competition that rewards the top three builders with $HUNT backed NFT grants. Learn more at /hunt. Allowance will be reset in 19:29:23 โ๏ธ
Omg!! I love that!!
Adorable Pichi!
Ah it sucks being accused of spam and shadow banned again.
I got notified on The Base App!!!!
Whoa you did?! Yey! So thereโs no such thing as shadow ban on the Base app? Iโm still desperately looking for an invite. Btw thanks for sharing the story on ham in the previous cast. Got me inspired
Adorable adventures
@procoin curate mini
This cast has been curated to MINI on the Feeds miniapp @pichi you have been issued MINI shares Feed Market Cap: $8,867.57
Whaaaaaat??? She made this herself? She is really talented
@pichi, you just received 1,004 claps from ๏ผ black1004 on this content! Want to join the fun? Explore content, swipe right to clap, and earn $HUNT based on your own clapping activity. Your daily clap allowance: 6,800 ๐ Install the Clap Mini App to get +50 free daily allowance ๐
I used to be a really big fan of community badges. But inauthentic automated AI slop accounts took it over and now itโs a signal for low quality. They can only be seen on your profile and you only have seconds for someone to look at it. Your profile is your Farcaster resume. https://paragraph.com/@pichi/farcaster-community-badges
When badges are hand picked and given, it makes more sense
Iโm very mad at the bots for taking this from us.
Rage against the machine
Is that cast still there? I get a white page when I click your recast and when I go to his page, it isn't there. I'd like to read it. ๐ซฃ
That happens to me too, and I always feel like a crazy person!!!!
I guess it's time to take the hat off.
I dont have any. Even if don't see yours
I removed them all due to all the bots.
Oh okay
Spammy accounts have copied our community badges (emojis in your display name). Is it time to retire them into Farcaster lore history? https://paragraph.com/@pichi/farcaster-community-badges
would love official badge support from clients on this https://warpcast.com/kompreni/0x17a3d1fa
They were easy identifiers back in the day when casts and tipping were running on hyper speed. Things have changed a bit since then.
Things have changed a lot. Itโs been good to reminisce but maybe this is really nostalgia and itโs time for something new.
Nostalgia is hell of a drug as they say
they were never a good idea
I enjoyed them but maybe theyโve run their course.
Tipping via DegenSub 1067 $DEGEN
Would be an interesting feature if people could carry a real community batch. E.g. if you're member of a channel you should be aloud to where a channel/community badge. Maybe max. 1 at the same time. I know they don't care about channels anymore, but you could see them as a communities where you want to belong (or not), so no need to use the channel (it's getting more defuse), but you can see if someone is dedicated to/believing in a certain community. Showing where you identify with, and keeping up with their standards is probably a more powerful tool than rewards.
GM @pichi Just wanted to let you know about this. My account was moved from Trustworthy 2 label๐ข to being suspicious๐ด. I can't still really place why but it's new to me. But, I'm getting back up to fixing it. Happy Mother's day by the way โค๏ธ
@pichi Plsss I really need your help, fixing this is not as easy as it is. Going through my past casts and I can't really figure out how I got to being spammy. Pls, I'll greatly appreciate for you to help reach out to the Warpcast team about this. It's really frustrating how my replies, cast and quote casts are not seen.
Great article ๐
The only time I missed was the 1 million tip of $degen
Give him one more chance
Seems the time has sadly come
Hey @pichi check this out! I want to know what you think. Especially abt usernames with emojis.
I like community badges but spammers mirror then heavily. Maybe they belong as lore now.
yep. having the top hat was cool on the name but eventually that changed imo. but idk. i donโt really remember if i have it. i will cast this and go and check lol are there other communities that use emojis on names for that purpose?
Yup! https://paragraph.com/@pichi/farcaster-community-badges
that @katekornish guide have been my food today and yesterday lmao and i'm trying my best to make a concious use of my time here, decided to post more about my "identity bricks"
Keep working on improving. It will eventually get noticed and changes will happen.
Do you know why we say โthe Hat Stays On?โ Read all about it in my article about community badges. They may be hidden now, but mine is still there! https://paragraph.xyz/@pichi/farcaster-community-badges
they are visible when i move directly to your profile)
Indeed! The hat stays on! ๐ฉ ๐
I think lot of people didnโt know this:)
Many thanks ๐ฉ๐
Thank you pichi This article is so valuable for FC lovers ๐
Nice read pichi
We stole it from wif
I was totally clueless about that. Thanks for enlightening me! ๐ฉ stays on
RIP Community Badges. I will miss you. https://paragraph.xyz/@pichi/farcaster-community-badges
I just realized it now!! Itโs gone!! ๐ญ๐ญ
Iโm sad. Moment of silence.
so you can see them once youโve clicked on the persons profile, but you can no longer browse according to that community? whatโs the fucking point in leaving it at all then? they make some weird ass changesโฆ
I miss them already ๐ฅบ
They want to make it clean! :/ Identity is gone just like that instead we may see community name near our profile while casting.
Miss when we still had the top caster badge
Me too
the hat stays on?
Channel new update already started ? Channel name is showing after your name
Huh? Mine are still thereโฆ
but, when I wanted to reply, they appeared
So weird! Must be a bug. But a bug I like.
maybe a glitch thenโฆ
yeah maybe, It's still visible in notifications too
will be missed got mine the week after they decided to start the test of hiding PB never saw it came to light๐ฅฒ
This is interesting. It looks really clean though and more professional. I like that aspect.
Do you know why I have ๐น and ๐ in my name? I explain it all here: https://paragraph.xyz/@pichi/farcaster-community-badges
I learned a lot from this article when it first came out ๐ ๐x85 20 $Degen 75 $Aba 20 $Wild 40๐
Yes yes pichi
๐ต๐ base ๐ฆ Sharks
I'm tipping: ๐x250 via Abundance Ecosystem on /impact /impact lets you earn curator rewards while supporting your favorite creators & builders on Farcaster
I'm tipping: 19 $DEGEN ๐x98 via Abundance Ecosystem on /impact /impact lets you earn curator rewards while supporting your favorite creators & builders on Farcaster
I'm tipping: 3 $HUNT via Abundance Ecosystem on /impact /impact lets you earn curator rewards while supporting your favorite creators & builders on Farcaster
Having one million degen to tip is crazy, wow
A bunch of us got shadow banned for casting so much too. Hilarious and stressful few days.
This is a gem! Thanks for explaining the history of the Hamuchanzu!
Oh wow, thanks for this! Some of them I recognized right away, but the rest I had no idea about... haha 50 $degen
lovely read pichi
Spread the ham lore far and wide. Tip generously. Make sure everyone can eat more ham! https://qnsrksz.warpcast.tools/api/frames/clever-firefox-28
๐ซก ๐x85 20 $Degen 75 $Aba 20 $Wild 40๐
Thank you!
Letโs spread it ๐ x100
more ham for pichi! ๐ x 200
Thank you!
I am starting to take ham a lot more seriously. Next stop is getting an allo. almost recouped my 5 mil of my own tokens that I gave away before I knew the weekly drop meta ๐คฃ
๐x777
eat . more . ham
YAS! All The ham!!!!!
ALLLL THE HAMMMMMMMMMM!!!! ๐คฃ ๐คฃ ๐คฃ ๐คฃ
Ham not spam๐ชง
Eat for ham ;) pichi ๐x35
Eat and eat Eat more ham ๐x100
yey lets eat ham together Pichi-san ๐ x 100 $ALEXEI
I love seeing everyoneโs tokens! 100 $PICHI
yey now i hold some Pichi :3 :D
thanks queen you should eat ham too ๐x690
Thank you!
your welcome ๐ซถ๐ซถ
btw is there not yet a pfp collection deployed on ham L3 called โhamstersโ? pretty ubiquitously loved little animal seems like low hanging ham
We have one and weโve been Hamsters since February ;) https://paragraph.xyz/@pichi/farcaster-community-badges
https://www.hamsters.wtf/
Nice. Buttons not working for me tho. Otherwise would like to adopt 1
@dosir can hamsters still be adopted?
We are so early
Still some to adopt. Did you get an error message? Tried with MetaMask? Connected to ham chain?
Thanks for sharing my agency Apex 420 $DOS
had the same thought lol, there's an argument that it's too easy/too normal. ham community leans into more absurd stuff https://warpcast.com/six/0xb8c64099
Haha thatโs too much coincidence for it not be done. Animal pfps are popular category and hamsters are the least arbitrary option for ham so I think they should do it. They can make the hamsters absurd if they want
Weโve had it for a long long time. Wrote about it here. https://paragraph.xyz/@pichi/farcaster-community-badges
oh TIL. thank you!
Hahha yes. Those pixl hamsters we got are absurd ๐
Tagging @dosir the hamster king
Thanks for the shout out fren 420 $DOS