walked & thought (i’m not recording myself…) but here’s my head on killing the masters, and driving sustainable retention & “interesting content” to the platform by fixing the leaderboard
reality is that nuking the OGs is not a binary toggle—it’s a systems-design question with second- and third-order effects; here’s how i see the moving parts:
1/ status & incentives
early adopters earned outsized reach by just being here first. that’s fine until the network’s marginal user can no longer break through the legacy moat. if a day-one video post autowins 100 likes while an actually useful deep dive & product update gets 20, you’re watching path-dependence strangle discovery
in practice, it means:
- new builders ship less because nobody sees them
- ct lurkers visit, scroll, decide “same clique, pass,” and bounce
- rewards funnels up to incumbents who push out tips, compounding the gap
→ the core unease isn’t envy; it’s a mispriced signal. the algo keeps saying “this is the good stuff,” while the builders & natives screams otherwise
2/ the three cohorts
- tribe 1 ~ signal ogs: ex/builders, polymaths, tech weirdos. crypto-adjacent but maybe not crypto-maxi. they add context, nuance, real reach outside the bubble. lose them & you forfeit narrative diversity
- tribe 2 ~ squatter ogs: first-mover clout, little net-new value. their likes are reflexive, their posts rarely travel. they’re not malicious, just noise-amplifiers
- tribe 3 ~ crypto devs / ct raiders: care about composability, capital, memetics. they build tooling, pump charts & bring liquidity—but also volatility
→ healthy farcaster = tribe 1 anchoring discourse & tribe 3 stoking velocity
→ tribe 2 is ballast; useful only until it turns to drag (today)… time to kill
3/ re-weighting without collapse
full de-weighting of all OGs flips one monoculture for another… better:
- time-decay any early-fid bonus: followers earned 18 months ago lose some power each quarter. still rewards history, but the ladder pulls up slowly (probably inline)
→ better: where do the net-new users on the platform go? $tipn/ $noice? video content? micro-blogging? the data tells the story
- multi-metric karma: marry onchain contribution (deploy a mini-app, tip from your own wallet, ship a hook) with social metrics (unique commenters, repost ratio, outbound clicks)
→ forces tribe 3 to do things, rewards tribe 1 for context, and leaves tribe 2 exposed
- topic entropy boost: posts that pull fresh tags or cross-graph links get a temporary surfacing bump. incentives exploration over echo (probably inline)
- weight across the week: monday post at 11am is not weighted the same as thursday post at 7pm or saturday post at 2pm (i’ve posted about this before). this is a countermeasure to protect the aggregate signal of group 1 against groups 2 & 3 (farm the leaderboard with food or thirst posts in last six hours, get nuked into oblivion; seriously, rate limit this garbage & mark em spam, it’s zero net-new value to the network)
→ none of that kills masters overnight; it just makes the throne contestable again, or at least directional pushes us that way
4/ why ct still matters
every network graduates from intimacy to economy. we’re at the hinge: either become a crypto super-app (wallet layer, mini-apps, liquidity) or remain a nice niche forum. ct is the only funnel with enough bodies & capital to fund that leap. the irony: ct won’t stay unless discovery feels meritocratic. fixing the leaderboard is table stakes for courting them
→ killing tribe 2 & losing 20% of tribe 1 might be the only way; either way, pivoting ahead of a bull market when builders here are finally drawing ct attention is BAD for builders & their projects
we integrated crypto but never tried to make it work, now we’re pivoting. if crypto doesn’t work here, nothing likely does. it’s inherent & fundamental. i don’t make the rules. no one is coming here for science or micro blogging (they will churn when the tribe 2 & tribe 1 leaderboard fabrication ceases & their engagement & rewards go to zero as we have seen before)
- tam + wallets on tap: fc’s core audience is maybe 2k daily users; ct has 100× that. you need their wallets to even sniff meaningful scale—tips, mints, gas, all flow from that crowd
- money memes = growth loops: every jump in fc activity—$degen, cashtags & charts, $noice, $bnkr—was bolstered by ct migrations. the price or airdrop lit the beacon, the beacon pulled new users, new users → more builders → more apps. rinse, repeat. no ct, no meme ignition
- builder economics: mini-apps survive on throughput. if $10-50k/day of tips moves consistently, someone will ship the next $degen. if it’s $500/day, they ship nothing & leave. ct’s speculation engine bankrolls the option set
- escape-velocity & critical mass: wallet-native super-app = thousands of experiments, most failures. ct supplies the risk capital & dopamine to fund those failures. without it, fc tops out as a pleasant but tiny forum
5/ the video pivot™
→ mostly orthogonal, and sometimes harmful, imo
shorts diversify content but solve none of the above. they actually magnify clout concentration because video creation has higher friction; incumbents with built-in audiences capture outsized algorithmic placement. good for dopamine, bad for surface-area innovation. pursue it, sure—but only after the incentive layer is patched. how does this play here?
→ 100% of tribe 2 & a good chunk of tribe 1 are the king makers here. they drive discovery for new incumbents with less established existing audience — this, at the expense of tribe 3 & a portion of crypto-focused tribe 1 — meaning tribe 2 is largely shit in & shit out & should NOT have anywhere near this amount of power in terms of driving leaderboard winners & content highlights (if tribe 2 drives the trending page, we are cooked, but why?) →
- intent mismatch: people historically open fc to talk markets, tokens, charts, governance, scaling, direction, building—words + wallet. 60-sec walk-and-talk vlogs & grwm shorts scratch a totally different itch. when they dominate the leaderboard, crypto folks bounce immediately: “wrong feed”
- winner-take-all dynamics: video reach scales with audience you already have. the early squatter ogs keep winning; new builders stay invisible. we try to drain the moat, and short creators backed by tribe 2 fill it right back up
- product focus tax: hosting, transcoding, moderation—video soaks up engineering cycles that could ship hooks, sdk docs, or wallet ux. opportunity cost is real
→ they can coexist, but siloed: if fc has to test video, give it a “clips” tab & its own karma bucket. keep the main feed merit-based onchain contribution + discourse. otherwise the brand message—“crypto builder hub”—gets fuzzy
6/ acceptable casualties imo
- we probably lose 10-20% of tribe 1 who equate any deeper crypto move with “wasteland”
- we probably see 60-70% of tribe 2 churn out once their engagement & rewards fall off, or more likely, they’re forced into creating more “interesting content”
7/ endgame
→ if new builders can’t acquire 500 organic followers in 90 days, the algo is clogged
simple.
8/ bottom line
we don’t need to torch every OG; we need to make status renewable. decaying privilege, rewarding provable contribution, and diversifying surface area gets us there…
peace follows not from silencing masters, but from making mastery a moving target
9/ tldr
- you need ct because it’s the only funnel with both bodies & capital
- video can coexist, but only siloed; in the main feed it reinforces squatter moats & blurs the crypto thesis
- double down on low-friction onchain toys, leaderboard re-weighting, and reward-back loops to maximize the odds of another $degen-style shockwave
- protect tribe 1, trim tribe 2, and give tribe 3 room to build—the network compounds when status is earned, not timestamped
in short:
→ “interesting content” is contextual: a chart breakdown of liquidity funnels is interesting to ct; a day-in-the-life vlog rarely is. flood the top slots with the wrong genre & you repel the very cohort that can bankroll growth
→ allow tribe 2 to remain in power & the reward loops degrades over time, ending with content that’s not interesting to any single niche. tribe 2 produces uninteresting content & then pushes more of it to the top through first-movers. this alienates builders at its most fundamental level. moreover, all of these new kings will churn as novelty fades & rewards collapse, leaving us stuck with a pot of slop that builders don’t care about. so builder churn. rewards dry up. new creators churn. then its gg.
→ interesting shorts on any niche can be found on almost any social media platform today. interesting crypto content can be found on maybe 2 platforms in total & the first is dying. now is our time to capitalize, not alienate. 27 replies
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Excellent articulation @itsbasil of what I have been intuitively feeling for a long time!
Agree with you on all things, not sure on the CT part, so here is my take on that in the spirit of finding out where we overlap and where not.
If we need most CT KOLs and their followers here to scale then we won't transcend beyond the Crypto Classes of 2017 and 2021 which dominate 80% of my CT timeline (not a Bitcoin maxi). They are still loud but will be low signal to early mainstream, bc their interests (casino) won't cross the chasm imo.
I can't and won't onboard my 4.5K Linkedin Network of mostly fellow Gen X's to CT bc most of them would only feel confirmed in their perspective on crypto = casino where tech bros extract money from own cabals and next cohorts (which they deem even more predatory).
I could and would, however, make an effort to onboard my normie friends here, if the 'right' 20% of CT is onboarded by yourself and other group 1 OGs to Farcaster.
Imo there is a space for "interesting content" for the class of 2025 that very few big CT accounts cater for, though some OGs and Vivek/Etherealize are staritng/acccelerating this now:
Ethereum = World Computer
Beyond Bitcoin = Digital Gold
the only PMF crypto (mainly Ethereum, Solana and perhaps now Tron/XRP) was DeFi and this resulted in speculation on every tokenised (infra) project building this with all its derivatives, which led to token launchers and ultimately Pump.
The next 1-2 years will shift DeFi from out-of-the-system towards being compatible & compliant with TradFi, and in a wider sense the Corporate World / society at large.
My business clients know next to nothing about use cases beyond speculation. They cannot see blockchain's revolution bubbling below the crypto casino (only visible use case & perpetuated by CT).
I want to go from Degen to Regen. This is why I am here. This is what Farcaster (Singapore of web3) might be unique in: attracting smart (and often older then Merkle team thiks/wants?) users that can see through all the shitshow shenanigans and now realise this is not going away.
Now what? They know that crypto is shifting fast from career risk to career opportunity: RWA, tokenize everything, coordinate instantly and nearly free of any friction whereever 2 or more people (esp. strangers on theinternet) want to fix a problem/explore an opportunity, and can coordinate this onchain. The tools are here and ready.
Hence, to attract them, we must produce interesting content about crypto, first and foremost. You are right, they don't come here for political commentary about the Middle East; they have already selected the best and most diverse Substacks for that already.
However, they might branch out and connect with Afrochicks or (redacted) blogger ONCE they decide that they can learn about useful applications of blockchain and come here daily. These are welcomed secondary effects.
The wallet-mini-app-tipping-token-disto flywheel that the team and all builders here are co-creating IS the unfair advantage of Farcaster:
You have to 'be and do' onchain to get it, here you can enjoy this together with frens and strangers, and you can make meaning of it from within your unique construction of reality.
What I am referring to are the 4 Ps of Knowing by John Vervaeke (see image attached, hope you can see it). Most normies have only ingested media fodder about crypto = propositional knowning until now, and this is likely to continue.
Farcaster has the unique chance to let them 'experience' crypto/web3 by over-indexing on the other 3 Ps - which btw cannot be automated by AI:
- perspectival knowing
- participatory knowing
- procedual knowing
You can't (easily/not yet) experience this on CT.
Hence, I am still here, for the potential you outline. I shipped my first and to-date only onchain experiment last year with an NFT collection delivered via frames for the /farcasterland channel I steward. 2K to 2.5K of the 3K mints were bots or obvious farmers, but also OGs like Jesse and Cooper minted.
(My) Lesson in that: I didn't want to follow-up/scale with group 2 squatters.
Still here to 'go all in' but I need to feel something I still don't feel yet. Skill issue? Perhaps.
Image ref: based on John Vervaeke's 4 P of Knowing 0 reply
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