“If I don't check Farcaster for just one day, I’ll miss a lot of new products and updates.”
Then you’d better read this newsletter.
Hi, I’m Sonya from Splits. We're unabashed true believers in Farcaster. As builders crafting tools for other builders, we're drawn to the frontiers where innovation thrives, and we think Farcaster exemplifies that pioneering spirit.
The open cabal simply can’t stop shipping, which means:
A lot is happening, constantly.
Even if you take a break every time you push to prod, you will struggle to keep track of what everyone else is doing. Because you’re trying to “focus” on “building,” dammit.
Allow me to help. Welcome to the first edition of This Week in Farcaster, a regular recap of updates in the ecosystem, inspired by the late great Week in Ethereum newsletter.
Before we dive in: If you’ve been off Farcaster for more than a day, and you don’t know what’s going on at all, read “Programmable social” by @tomu. Then @luc can catch you up on the current crop of main characters (“if you feel overwhelmed with the recent launches across farcaster i wrote something for you”).
Let’s go.
Privy
Three useful updates from Privy, the embedded wallet platform:
“Now users can sign up with passkeys (without linking another login method)!”
“You can now download your user table as a CSV directly from the dashboard.”
The “new self-serve CAPTCHA feature automatically and invisibly detects [bots] — with no friction to real users.”
Warpcast
In response to ongoing concerns about marketing, Dan clarified that Merkle Manufactory — the company behind the Farcaster protocol and Warpcast client — has a three-pronged approach to user growth:
1. Continue to iterate on and scale opportunities for users to make money — Farcaster native assets, frames, USDC rewards, etc.
2. Continue to work on the core features of the social network. These features create retention.
3. Additionally, we're scaling the underlying protocol with Snapchain. The current version of Hubs don't scale another 10x.
“There are no other priorities at the moment,” Dan said.
The latest Frames v2 capability is viewProfile
: “Frames can now open a native (within Warpcast) modal with Farcaster profile information, followers, mutuals and ability to follow / unfollow.” Dan (@dwr.eth) shared an example implementation as well.
Merkle teammate @sds wrote a technical blog post: “So you want to build a job processing system? Sharing lessons learned during a migration from Faktory Enterprise.”
Clankerverse
Clankermon, “an onchain meta trading game,” is up and running. Naturally, so is $clankermon. Creator Matthew Fox unspooled his vision for Clankermon: it’s like Pokemon mashed up with DEX Screener. (One of those things where as soon as it exists you’re like “of course this exists.”) If you decide to play, please note: “Your clankerdex is a smart account owned by the wallet you had connected during sign up.” Matthew is “working on solutions for anyone who wants to change that wallet.”
Clankersub / $clankersub is “an experiment in using $DEGEN tips to share LP rewards from a clanker token.” Clever! Click through for participation instructions.
ClankPad, @mcbain’s “token launchpad for every community on Farcaster,” is nearing primetime. In action: $fckit.
Opportunity alert: Clanker index wen?
$gdupi creator @yonfrula shared “babe, what's clanker?”, a video “showcasing how easy it is to deploy tokens right from your farcaster feed.”
@arjux declared the existence of Agent Reserve, “the first agent swarm monitoring the global economy,” and launched a token to accompany this mission. Unclear if real or LARP. The project appears to originate from “the craigslist for AI agents.” All in all, very cyberpunk.
Anonworld
FID is “the first non-token credential type supported on @anonworld.” The details are neat:
How does it work?
- We use SIWF [sign in with Farcaster] to get a signed message from Warpcast
- Your custody address is recovered from this message
- The address is used to get the storage proof for the fid owned by that address
- We validate that fid is below your selected valueAll of this happens in the zk circuit, preserving anonymity.
Also, in an amusing tweak, “you can be pseudonymous now by adding a username and/or pfp to make it easier for others to recognize your posts.” Funny, the anon app now supports identities! However: “ZK pseudo is still pretty dope actually, you can build a reputation with no fear of doxx,” as @toadyhawk.eth explained.
Super
Farcaster client Super (formerly known as Supercast) is de-SAAS-ifying by canceling paid subscriptions. @woj.eth prefers a business model in which:
- we don't charge anyone who didn't get value from the app and $10 really matters to them
- we allow wealthy members to spend infinite $$$ on @super
Purportedly “we have some great ideas, cancelling the recurring sub is first step to implement them” 👀 That said, Super will continue offering paid memberships to unlock additional features. Unclear how membership is distinct from “all recurring subscriptions,” but Woj says that “most of the app will become free.”
Miscellaneous
Audius reopens its grants program.
The /cryptosapiens channel, an open community for onchain creators, launched $cabal “as a novel way to reward meaningful engagement on Farcaster,” powered by OpenRank.
The team behind onchain browser Roam was acquihired by Base.
Farcade added a correspondence game called Words, using Warpcast notifications to let you know when it’s your turn.
Food for thought: “everything we have here is because of degen; this is how crypto works.”
@tamrat seeks feedback on “Grok for Farcaster.”
“Introducing Tunecaster, a Farcaster client designed for music discovery.”
Ponder, purveyors of the Social Predictions game, started cross-populating Farcaster comments to the website.
“tag @urls with a prompt to create an ai generated memecoin app (mApp) on @base”
Blueprint, which is Bello’s accelerator program for onchain creators, has a refreshed homepage.
Lastly, more tech blogging, but this time directly on Farcaster. @christopher:
In December, we replaced @farcaster/shuttle with Waypoint, our custom event processing system built with Rust, protobufs, and sqlx. It's very fast and much more memory efficient. Running on an optimized Kubernetes cluster with Terraform infrastructure, it also requires minimal costs and delivers instant upgrades.
Further details in the post. The project he’s talking about seems to be /uno or maybe /unofficial and the entity behind the project seems to be @unofficial, but what it actually does I could not tell you. Maybe still in stealth?
Aaand that’s all for this week! Did I miss anything? Reply to let me know.
Cheers,
Sonya
gm! I’m back from my epic holiday with family. What did I miss in these last few years (weeks)?
what you missed: https://paragraph.xyz/@weekinfarcaster/first-edition
Ooo thank you so much! Gonna dig in
Last Week in Farcaster, all the deets of what happened: https://paragraph.xyz/@weekinfarcaster/first-edition of course I have already started compiling this week's edition, because Farcaster never sleeps! especially not the builders
drumroll please!! 🥁🥁🥁 new from /splits: This Week in Farcaster, the essential recap of everything you missed while you were working on your own project https://paragraph.xyz/@weekinfarcaster/first-edition this post by @haole is too on-point so I had to include it as the opener: https://warpcast.com/haole/0x26632ffd
the first edition of This Week in Farcaster is STACKED, featuring work by: • @tomu and @luc, who get the vision and the big picture • @privy / @henri making it easy to support users onchain • ofc the latest from Merkle re: Warpcast, Frames v2, and the infrastructure of this platform @dwr.eth @sds @v • the Clankerverse b/c @proxystudio.eth and @dish- really changed the game like that: • @matthewfox's /clankermon • $clankersub by @microsub • @mcbain's @clankpad • @yonfrula on creating $gdupi • @arjux the mysterious "Agent Reserve" • @slokh's newest changes to @anonworld with a comment from @toadyhawk.eth • @woj.eth switching up @super's business model and more from @audius @humpty @portrait @xenbh.eth @itsbasil @tamrat @ghostlinkz.eth @cojo.eth @levy @christopher 🙌 https://paragraph.xyz/@weekinfarcaster/first-edition
I guess there's a limit to how many accounts you can tag in one cast lol
Amazing 100 $degen
great read! cooking up something /splits related for one of clankermons chapters :)
👀 can't wait to find out
wow great post! need read everyweek to catch up the new trend!
btw I discovered Newcaster through seeing that post, and it's really coming to come in handy as we spin up a new Farcaster account for this project!
Glad it helps!
loveeeee ittttt
um, could this be more perfectly timed for my long weekend away? beautifuuuul, ty! subscribed!
this is another take on the same concept, a little more zoomed out, with practical next steps if you're interested in any of the projects :D https://warpcast.com/luc/0x9b7c1044
oh awesome, thanks for the point! 🖤 🖤
you're so sweet to share this, thanks a ton Sonya! 1000 $degen