@jacek

Users you don't want. One of the things I learned from running a reward token on top of Farcaster is that it attracted a lot of undesirable users to the platform. There was a moment when @dwr referred to these users as "low quality users." I felt taken aback at the time. But in hindsight, there are users who hijack a platform, use it in ways it was never intended, and ultimately harm it. Michael Seibel explains this well. Imagine if Airbnb rented homes to people who threw drug parties. They're wrecking properties, getting police called, and making neighbors hate those listings. Airbnb's reputation tanks, property owners stop listing, and the business dies. But short term? As a startup you look at the metrics and think, why would I kick out paying users? They're helping my numbers. One path is juicing metrics. The other is sustainable growth. You have to know the difference. https://youtu.be/BSYExUUrmD4?si=QwD0kzTJmjXW9Xy6 I and everyone else who launched tokens on Farcaster were probably not using the platform as intended. And it likely hurt Farcaster more than it helped. I do think there was a world where Farcaster and Degen could have teamed up, using Degen to reward good content, similar to what Farcaster Rewards became. I would have been open to those conversations. But farmers and reward chasers are hijack users. They do wonders for metrics, which is why Farcaster saw the crazy growth it did, but they cannibalize any platform they touch and destroy value for the real users. If I were in Farcaster's shoes today, I'd make farming rewards against the policy of the app. I'm not even sure launching tokens on Farcaster isn't hijacking it in some way since that's not what it was built for. Token launches lead to airdrops, airdrops lead to farmers and traders flooding the app, and that's probably why Farcaster later pivoted toward trading and away from social. Right now in the bear you're seeing cool content on Farcaster again because the noise has faded. But they should prepare for the next bull and know which users are net negative and which are net positive. I also now understand more clearly why Kaito was removed from X. The nice part about decentralization is that any client can pick up those users and build for them, but they'll cannibalize that too. At Degen, a lot of the farmers have been rinsed out. My hope is this next wave won't have freeriders. In this bear we're building a new wave of skin-in-the-game holders. That's why we have the whale chat, the NFT, and other signals to help us understand who's here for the community and who isn't. We've wisened up. We'll be watching for hijack users a lot more carefully going forward.

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