The best thing about Farcaster is that it’s an open backend that can be used to create many different kinds of frontends.

The initial Twitter clone flagship app shows how to use accounts, posts, likes, a feed, and other tools. And it also packages a wallet, embedded apps, and soon DMs.

But it’s only partially an app. It’s really a dev kit. Showing the sophistication of what can be built.

> and soon DMs

DMs have never been part of the open backend. Every attempt from the community to fill this gap has been met with Web2-style "not in my backyard"

I got fed up and turned my attention to AT Protocol

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS.

shazow.net

Currently: WhatsABI

Unfortunately, a change is needed to the XMTP identity layer to support AT Protocol identities. Until that change is made, ATProto devs can’t use it, so not much progress there.

But, there is some community  momentum building to use a non-MLS based encryption layer due to the centralizing nature of TreeKEM in MLS.

Any progress getting the ATProto ecosystem to embrace something like XMTP?

Glad you found the signal through the noise there. I may creep on your follows to build a better feed

Overall its been really good. There is a spirit of open collaboration. Took a while to follow enough people that match my interests so that my feed is pretty good and not filled with angry politicking.

There are surprisingly a lot of Ethereum/IPFS people there.