One of the fundamental unlocks we are all exploring on Farcaster is that each user (FID) is associated with a wallet address. On a functional level this means I can mint NFTs with warps OR eth, or easily find and join token-gated group chats, for example. When I claim $DEGEN atthe completion of Airdrop 2, tips I've received will land in a wallet connected to my FID. FID + Wallet use cases are numerous, more will emerge, and its part of the reason that casting is fun & farcaster has potential to become a sufficiently-decentralized 'everything' app for people who enjoy doing stuff with tokens. And maybe also for other kinds of people too.
So why don't channels have wallets? A wallet would allow channels to do things like:
1) Receive donations
2) coordinate channel members & take collective action as a channel (example: /genart mints a commemorative channel NFT for all members)
3) Compensate channel mods or contributors
4) Receive $DEGEN tips, allowing people to tip channels they love, not just users
BUT...There are several obvious issues with channel wallets, primarily: who owns or operates a channel wallet?
A channel is not equivalent to an EOA, or a multisig. Existing wallets don't fit 1-to-1 onto the channel as a concept on farcaster. In my opinion,these problems are not reasons why channels shouldn't have wallets as a rule. I wish that farcaster allowed channels to decide: do we have a wallet? yes/no
In the absence of that choice on warpcast, we can turn to other projects building tools for multiplayer activities in crypto.
Yesterday Proxy Studio launched /openventures, a channel we are using as an open notebook that will be a resource for our development of projects on Farcaster. /openventures will also be used as a coordination mechanism for project development. We envision the channel as part research, part networking, part open sandbox. Its the public, social space that we have created on the platform where our venture studio will build.
To explore what it means for a channel (/openventures) to have a wallet, we created a Room on Party Protocol. Rooms are a new feature on Party, here is how PartyDAO introduced Rooms:
- Every Room has a Chat & Wallet
- Every Room has a bonding curve to Buy & Sell memberships
- 10% of every trade goes to the Room's wallet
The feature that applies most to our channel is the wallet itself. Launching a Room gives /openventures a wallet and a means to govern it. /openventures has a dedicated channel address without needing to trust any single mod or user to operate it on /openventures behalf. Proxy Studio contributes to the channel wallet's governance because we purchased Roomn membership NFTs, just like anyone else can (see link attached to this post).
For a popular channel, a Room membership might see a lot of traders speculating on such an NFT. Poeple often think of speculation as dirty or bad in crypto, and lots of channel owners might HATE the sound of this. We don't mind, because "when people buy and sell, 10% of every transaction goes into the Room's wallet." If people want to speculate on the future growth of /openventures that is great! Now our channel wallet will benefit directly from speculation (whether people are bullish or bearish) and all without anyone needing to provide liquidity.
So far /openventures has earned 0.011962 ETH or $33.11 from 3 people buying & selling 22 Open Ventures Room NFTs.
Will the channel wallet catch on? It's too early to say, but in our opinion, every channel mod should consider whether having a wallet would be useful now, or might ever be useful in the future.
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