One of the most compelling downstream effects of a decentralized social stack is the move from isolated apps to integrated experiences. Formerly, the most common user flow in crypto was from the information layer to the exchange, whether centralized or decentralized. Get alpha & news on twitter, telegram & discord, connect wallet to dApp, trade tokens, profit. It was that simple, ETH cost $150, and I had a girlfriend. Lots has changed since then. Even as recently as 2023, this flow was relatively uniform. More advanced users might have a Unibot or Banana Telegram wallet setup, allowing them to stay within a single interface to chat with their friends, learn about a token, check price, buy token, check price again, brag about gains to friends, and sell token.
Farcaster, a protocol for building sufficiently decentralized social networks, introduces radically different possibilities for what a crypto user experiences upon entry into a global, dispersed network that is Web3, our tragically named and widely hated or loved, depending who you ask, industry & culture. How can we understand this? What are the implications? Rather than tackling the broader question, lets zoom in on one topic of personal interest: funding projects on the social layer.
So, what makes for a fundable project on Farcaster?
One thing that makes Farcaster so compelling for builders is that so many puzzle pieces that might capture value are emergent - there aren't as many category defining projects as in the rest of crypto. We are still discovering how users will engage with farcaster, and that means that 1) lots of products & tools need to be built that either respond to or anticipate user needs 2) what might be a well-established market sector on social - i.e. paid promotion for social posts, barely exists here.
Some of the opportunities are obvious. Build a MVP for a product that exists in social like decentralized paid cast promotion, see if users on Farcaster engage, iterate and grow. And I'm super excited to track & learn from people doing this. Another obvious opportunity is integrating Farcaster with any of the major existing crypto use cases: finance, art, governance, asset tokenization, etc. Both of these verticals involve either bringing social media tools onchain, or onchain stuff into social. It also just makes sense, most people on Farcaster are native to tech & crypto, they want to be be able to do all the stuff they love online here, with their friends, in a single app. If I can mint an NFT on Farcaster - where I'm talking about the NFT, making predictions on how much the NFT will one day be worth, and sharing other cool examples from the collection in casts & group chats - thats where I'll be minting it. Whats the incentive to leave the social layer unless I really have to?
Are social-experiences that command attention on Farcaster something that we can approach less as user-generated content, freely given, and more as fundable endeavors that are 'variably monetizeable'? They might not result in a return today, or a token sold now, but can generate returns & value over time, selling something when it makes sense? Is a thread just a thread, or is it a mini-project? Maybe a thread that is good enough, that goes viral enough, could even be funded?
I login to Farcaster because I expect that users will do cool things, talk about cool things, and showcase those cool things in innovative ways. Sure you have the technology side - the protocol, the client, the frame - but the content side is equally important: if the content sucks I don't really care about the frame. Maybe we should be funding people to make better frames, instead of just assuming that if we build great products that enable frame making, that users will create cool frames?
Let's look at some examples of social experiences that I think have pretty clear value and might even be considered a market category in their own right:
(Note: the idea of "social experiences" as a market category is incredibly general, this is a screenshot essay, not a graduate thesis.)
1) Seedbux was a token experiment by @Worm.eth who created a token, $SBUX, that users could mint if they entered their seed phrase into a frame. Minting happened on the feed, and it generated a lot of buzz and conversation about user safety, frame technology, smart contracts, token distribution, and so on. Mostly it was just fun. FUN. Yes, that was the really innoative thing, Worm took the most conventional thing in the world, creating a token and distributing it for free to users for an arbitrary action, and made it fun. We enjoyed it.
2) Rani or @4484 has been running daily onchain scavenger hunts where he tells a general story about some piece of crypto or onchain history. Each scavenger hunt uses a frame to solicit the answers to specific questions (i.e. "what was the token id of the last mooncat rescued in 2020, it was wrapped & then rewrapped. Enter the mooncats three token IDs) and rewards whoever comes in first & second with $DEGEN tips. These scavenger hunts are not selling anything, but they certainly bring value to Rani's personal brand, their FID. Other things that Rani makes or sells might be perceived as having more value because of these social experiences they are developing.
3) User @ted created an excellent frame that was essentially a slide show of gifs. Before the user began the slide show, they were directed to open a link & play an audio stream. The audio was basically a voice over that mirrored what historical figures were saying in the gifs, and a little sound played during the audio stream indicated when the user should click onto the next slide in the frame. On one hand the experience shows the limitations of frame technology at present and on the other it was this beautiful, magical little moment where farcaster users were engaging in a new use of frames, and commenting with stunned reactions to the quality of the content. I loved it! I wish I could have minted it! Ted is creating a lot of these digital, social experiences and some of them are token gated (check out /clubted & ted's hypersub. Well worth the cost for me this month).
4) another example of a "social experience" might be the /replyguys channel. Hosted by @Tervo, /replyguys is a home for a lot of CT (Crypto Twitter) transplants. The channel is not monetized in anyway, it doesn't have a singular purpose or a product, but people use it all the time. The social experience of engaging with the channel itself is what brings a certain segment of users to farcaster, and keeps them there. It's special because of the vibe of the community, the vibe of the channnel.
5) DEGEN as a project is less of a utility token and more of a social experience. The entire mechanic of the token, whether the initial distribution or the current Airdrop Round 2, takes cues from and is executed on the social layer. Users tip on casts, and /degen is one of the most active channels on farcaster.
6) Unlonely's "Love on Leverage" dating show where single degens meet & mingle on stream, and watchers rate how their speed-dates go using $VIBE tokens continues to attract attention & buzz. The show is fun, the token gets volume before & during the show as users want to influence outcomes on stream, and its social. You are doing it with friends, on chat.
Last week, I was talking to @markfishman, a smart Farcaster user you should definitely follow, about the difference between venture funding & crowdraises. Mark said: "Venture is well suited for taking large swings on potentially massive platforms with network effects...Crowdfunding is better suited for direct demand." This is a useful framework for understanding why VC money will so readily fund a novel idea for a DEX (theres a chance that everyone in the world might use the tech to trade all manner of assets) and why more fringe experiments & products often emerge on the social layer, when users come together to contribute funding or to add value in some other way to an idea they like. But what if the biggest swings you can take on a decentralized social network (after building the network itself) involve creating the best, most viral social experiences for users? Will we see the emergence of people raising capital not to build a dex, but to ship a social experience?
I wonder who will fund the great social experiences of farcasters growth stage. Will it be small collectives of anons, crowdraising to tell stories, run competitions, make meaning & memes? Or will funds hop in the game? I know Proxy Studio will focus on social experiences as a primitive for the decentralized social layer, something that is worthy of direct attention, development & funding not just at the platform, dapp or product level, but at the level of the single account (the FID), the cast, or the channel.
It's time to experiment with decentralized social experiences, lets make some memories. We might even make some money at the same time.
