Farcaster Pro is an important step forward in making the protocol sustainable.

Raising a bunch of money from investors and spending it is not sustainable. It’s a tactic not a strategy.

If the protocol can charge a fee that people are willing to pay annually, then it will have budget to spend on what is important to the protocol—independent of any one company.

We’re starting with a pragmatic, optimized for speed approach today where we are centrally collecting, deciding (via an algo) and distributing rewards.

In the next few weeks, subscribing to pro will be onchain and permissionless. 

In the longer term, ideally we can figure out how move rewards to something more akin Bitcoin or Ethereum block rewards where funds are collected and distributed entirely at the protocol. We’re not close to this and not a near term priority, but it’s where we would like to get to. 

(Solve the problems in the correct sequence.)

What makes a good feature for a protocol-level subscription?

1. Features are enforced across clients — Snapchain, onchain contracts,  protocol fname and DC servers, etc.

2. Any app-level feature will create incentive for other clients to offer as a top of funnel "our client gives you this for FREE!". This is consumer surplus.

3. Ultimately, protocol-based social networks should generate a lot of consumer surplus in terms of what's available in the standard UX for most clients.

4. Conversely, it's tricky to add features that are 1) valuable 2) can be enforced at the protocol-level. 

5. An additional wrinkle is even clients can fudge protocol-level features (e.g. we support 900 character casts + a link for long casts and render them fully in our client; we link to a slideshow mini app but render the images in our client). This is why the protocol having a "official" client that is protocol-aligned and has high relative market share in the long run is good for the protocol.

𝓵𝓲𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓵𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓼𝓾𝓶𝓶𝓮𝓻 · bootstrapping apps · stride.systems · skeet.build · buoy.club

this is an exciting step forward! 

do you have any ideas on how to incentivize other farcaster clients to support pro features? or is this not necessary?

I like pleasure spiked with blockchain and music is my aeroplane. It's my aeroplane. @pizzadao underboss & /politics contributor. Featured in "Number Go Up"

Yes. Will explain what makes a good pro feature in a separate post later today.

What's the advantage to going onchain and permissionless? That features can be implemented by 3rd party apps?

Building /fc-africa. I am the EggFather. The greatest GYM CHAD you’ve ever seen. /muscle /ftc

Thoughts on antidoteblog.com |
Farcaster Pro User #235 |
Agents and Intents @NEAR | prev investments and BD 
@ZkSync, NEA and Balderton Capital

1. Make sign ups free

2. Charge power users for pro

3. Pay out revenue to creators and developers

How are you balancing this with new organic growth? I assume it is much easier for people to sign up for free than convert them to paying from the first minute.

Artist + Designer + Front-End Dev
// Core at @ethereumgt // @rugradio creator // PFP: Degentlemen #2706

1. Make algo work in a decentralized way -- if open would immediately get gamed

2. Need to design contract / mechanism

Love the vision. What are the main struggles with block-reward-style distribution?

Photographer • Builder • Collector • /art-share •

https://linktr.ee/mikkolagerstedt

The goal is to make storage as cheap as possible.

Any chance on getting bigger storage with pro?

Annual 10k collections keep things fresh!

so you're saying there will be a new 10k collection every year. got it

it will be super exciting watching you all work on solving that problem at network scale

> Raising a bunch of money from investors and spending it is not sustainable. It’s a tactic not a strategy.

More people need to hear this.

👏👏👏 Good vision for funding a protocol- work out the details as we go.

/higher skateboards 🛹  writing /luminous 💡 prev. shapeshift 🦊

All the same. The artist is @miguelgarest.eth

Will the NFTs be 10,000 unique NFTs? Or just all the same one?

farcaster is the place to be for builders and creators, such a great choice

cookin' @askgina.eth https://askgina.ai, @consensys class '17 - INTP

And you just demonstrated that people are willing to pay that fee

am i understanding right that another client can provide its own arbitrary benefits or features for pros that would be client-specific?

Great vision for sustainability, excited to see how Farcaster Pro evolves! Looking forward to the onchain and permissionless model.

Sustainable beats sensational. Pro feels like planting seeds for a self-sufficient forest, not a bonfire.