@jacek

So I guess there’s a rumor going around that Farcaster might get acquired. I have no insider info obviously, but we can at least look at where the chips have fallen. Farcaster has pivoted into trading. Base app has also pivoted into trading, so now they’re competitors. Farcaster has Clanker, Base has aligned with Zora, so they both have “launchers” (even if Zora is still its own independent team). Either way, Base is the bigger boy. My understanding is a lot of casts / network activity are coming from Base, though I’m not 100% sure that’s right. And so far it feels like the execution of the Base app has been met with… not a ton of enthusiasm? Expectations were definitely higher. Coinbase has deep pockets and distribution, sure. But if Robinhood had looked at all the trading platforms that existed when they launched, they probably would’ve never started. And Base isn’t the Robinhood of DeFi right now, not even close. So I don’t think this gets decided just by who has distribution and deep pockets today. A lot of outcomes are possible. Farcaster could still win here if they want to, and honestly someone else could too. That said, the team being quiet could mean a bunch of things. Maybe they took a quick break. Or maybe after acquiring Clanker and pivoting to trading, they’re heads down doing strategy + go-to-market + building the thing around that. I don’t really know. Either way it would be really sad to see the protocol get acquired by a giant like Coinbase. At that point the “decentralized social” thesis for Farcaster is basically gone, and us (or someone else) has to fork the protocol. Anyways this is all gossip. Gn degens.

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