Farcaster VIPs (Very Interesting People), Episode 5: Prof Werder

"What if we did a morning show that’s all about Farcaster... One you can enjoy with a cup of coffee, and we just talk about what’s happening?”

Of all the many people I've had the pleasure (and occasional displeasure) to meet onchain, Prof Werder (aka “The Nounish Professor”) is one of my absolute favourites, and she is easily one of the most interesting people building on Farcaster.

Among other things, she is the cofounder of GM Farcaster, the go-to morning show that’s setting the standard for onchain media on the purple app.

What started as a simple idea—just a daily onstream recap of Farcaster’s latest happenings over a cup of coffee—has quickly evolved into a full-fledged onchain media network that’s growing by the day.

With her sharp wit, engaging content, and relentless consistency, Prof Werder (alongside her intrepid and equally interesting cofounder Adrienne) has transformed GM Farcaster from a niche experiment into a must-watch show that is reshaping how we connect, learn, and build on Farcaster. 

Prof's own journey has been a bit of a winding road that is as fascinating as it is refreshingly real, proving that the most interesting people in this space are often the ones who took the most unexpected paths to get here.

Werder didn’t start out planning to teach blockchain and crypto to eager undergrads... In fact, she didn’t start out planning to teach at all. 

After finishing her undergrad in Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics and Government (CLEG), then earning a Law Degree from Suffolk University (and finally, an MBA on top for good measure) she went to work for a trademark and copyright research company. But her heart just wasn’t ever in the traditional law grind. So eventually, she made the decision to put that MBA to work and pivot into an entrepreneurial pursuit, starting an event planning business (something she had always dreamed of doing.) 

She would go on to spend almost a decade creating beautiful IRL experiences for her clients, before eventually making another career change that would have her combining all of her accumulated talents to teach Law, Events, Entrepreneurship and Hospitality as a Professor at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Werder’s onchain journey first started in 2017 with an MSNBC article promising to teach about smart contracts through—wait for it—digital cats. CryptoKitties were her gateway drug, as they were for so many early NFT enthusiasts, and that’s how she first learned about Ethereum, wallets, Smart Contracts and more. But like many, after the initial hype fizzled, she wandered away and didn’t become interested in the space again until few years later. 

In 2020, she noticed her students’ growing interest in crypto and decided to pitch her FGCU Dean on letting her develop what would be the first ever Blockchain course at her university (and one of the first in the USA.) With self-sourced course material and guest speakers, she helped bring the legal side of NFTs to life in the classroom, turning her own curiosity into an innovative new curriculum for her students. That class grew in popularity and evolved, adding special topics and integrating blockchain in ways few other institutions or instructors dared to try at the time.

Fast forward to 2021, and the Nouns project, with its playful and collaborative ethos, had captured her attention. She stumbled into the community via a fun isometric nounish extension project called Sidenoun, and before she knew it, she was spearheading an NFT project of her own alongside her students called FloriNouns. The collection featured Florida-themed Nouns with a sunny vibe, perfect for her school’s colors and energy. It wasn’t just a class project; it was an exercise in onchain creativity, CC0 art and governance that brought her students directly into the fold of one of the most vibrant communities in crypto.

“There’s something that was just inherently interesting to me about Nouns. It was always changing. And the two aspects of nouns just kind of touch all of my background and my soul: The CC0 and the experiment with IP to me is so interesting...and then the governance aspects of like, can we do things differently, not only like from a larger political perspective, but just corporate governance and such?”

Over the past 3 years, Prof has been an integral part of the nouns community. She was one of the founding members of Nouncil, a council of nounish builders who have been meeting to discuss nouns governance once a week every week since early 2022. She is also a longtime contributing member of the Lil Nouns community, and was one of the founding members (alongside this Toad) of both The Noun Square Onchain Media Collective and The Yellow Collective. She even spearheaded a collaboration between Nouns and Pudgy Penguins, convincing Luca Netz to make  a run of be-noggled versions of their popular plush collectibles. I have a hard time imagining what nouns would be like without its resident Professor. 

Like many in the nouns community, Prof was one of the earliest cohorts of people to join Farcaster, and she was even one of the approximately 70 people who gathered for the inaugural “Beta” FarCon in Boston (her hometown); a small, intimate gathering of FC fans in the summer of 2023.

She immediately felt at home among some of the brightest minds she had ever met. “I felt like I was in the Google dorm room, and you know, what an opportunity. The smartest, most dedicated builders in the onchain space are on Farcaster right now, building the future of the internet.”

It’s this unique blend of intellectual energy, innovation, and tight-knit community that has kept her hooked and coming back day by day. She often describes Farcaster as being at the forefront of onchain experimentation; a place where builders, thinkers, and creators can come together to shape the future of the internet. 

 “I don’t know how I got in this room, but I know I want to stay here and contribute somehow,” she recalls. This sense of belonging, and the chance to be a part of something new and groundbreaking drew her in further. For Prof Werder, Farcaster isn’t just a platform—it’s home base for her onchain journey.

 “So I figured, one are where I could contribute was media and thought, you know, what if we did a morning show that’s all about Farcaster? One you can enjoy with a cup of coffee, and we just talk about what’s happening.”

She pitched it to her friend (and now cofounder) Adrienne,  and the rest, as they say, was herstory. 

Over the past year, alongside Adrienne, she has helped build an onchain space that’s part talk show, part community hub, and all passion project. 

“We just wanted a way to talk about Farcaster with a cup of coffee in hand,” she says, and what started as a simple idea has slowly but surely evolved into a full-time gig for both of them, with a combination of values-aligned sponsors and individual Hypersub patrons helping to make their enterprise sustainable. 

For Prof, leaving her full-time teaching role wasn’t easy, but she made that leap this past August, staying on only as a single-course instructor to keep her blockchain course alive. 

Their flagship “GM Farcaster” show now runs three days a week, with plans to expand into a broader network that supports Farcaster content creators. They’ve already launched a handful of new shows recently, and there’s even some fun merch on the way—so don’t be surprised if you spot a GM Farcaster mug in the wild sometime soon.

If there’s one thing that keeps Prof Werder hooked on both Farcaster and Nouns alike, it’s the people. Whether it was helping to build a float for The Rose Parade or sailing around New York Harbor in a giant noggled Yacht, it’s the connections and shared experiences that have made her stay.

“It might be cheesy, but it really is all about the friends we made along the way. I can’t find other places where I can have all this variety of interesting conversations,” she explains. Farcaster, with its on-chain social experiment vibe, has become her digital home, and she’s not planning on leaving anytime soon.

For those who think crypto is all about flashy projects and price speculation, Prof Werder is proof that it can also be a space for deep human connection and creative exploration. Whether she’s lecturing in the classroom, yapping onstream, or chatting away on the purple app, she embodies the very ethos of being nounish: part builder, part dreamer— all heart.

So the next time someone says Farcaster doesn't have enough interesting people, just point them in the direction of the Professor—they might just learn a thing or two.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. And if you are enjoying this series, please drop a comment and share this profile with your network on Warpcast and X. Let's make it known together that there is no shortage of Very Interesting People on the purple app!