Degen

If you’re building a mini app for Farcaster, $DEGEN should be the default token. It’s widely held, fun to use, and drives way more engagement than USDC or WETH.

We dropped $100M+ in $DEGEN airdrops last year to Farcaster users. Happy to support you and help amplify, there's no downside to trying it.

Why are mini apps defaulting to USDC or WETH when $DEGEN is our native token? Top token on Base, brought most of us here. Should be the default. Devs like @dish @colin @tldr — what’s stopping us?

cma.xyz. Founder /paragraph, ceo /mirror, previously at Google & Coinbase 

prompting /bracky, playing /bracket, reading /greatbooks

yeah totally get that, just DMed you a few other ideas we could try that might work better and be less of a big shift.

clankers support $DEGEN pairing, you can ask the bot right now to deploy with a degen pair! 

the reason why it's not the default pair is because there's less of a demand compare to WETH, true for $CLANKER as well

for non WETH pairs, swaps have to hop from multiple pools which result in a worse trading experience

I mean, maybe not use the treasury to support the teams/decs that will immediately market sell the degen to stay afloat. 

It did happen before, and neither degen nor the farcaster community benefited from those teams/devs. Just because they use the degen name does not mean they have anyone elses interest at heart (apart from their own).

Yeah, I’ll be reaching out to devs one by one to figure out why $DEGEN isn’t being used more as the default. I want to understand what’s holding them back and how we can use the treasury and our influence to support them. Will see what comes out of those convos.

I totally agree that $DEGEN should be the default token for devs building mini apps on Farcaster, you already mentioned its benefits, so no need to reiterate. However, I think you should talk with those who've built and those who're building and try to see where their head is at. They may have concerns and until you're made aware of them, you can do nothing to help them

Building $SECONDS  https://seconds.money/

Hey it's not a technical issue. 

Degen needs more tools and frameworks like for fundraising, reaching the degen holders (degen rain is great tool), launch pads, bringing initial users etc. 

If there are at least 1000 degen holders who can invest as little as 1000 DEGEN per project and talk about it in farcaster. Then a lot of devs comes here. 

For devs, 

1) Need initial money (few $1000 enough), 

2) Initial users (like 100 users each put 5 dollars worth of DEGEN in their app gives them a lot of confidence)  

3) people who talk about it (if some 10-20 people with 10k+ followers  chat / give feedback in public / private, that boost his confidence lot more.)

4) More infra support (like show this metrics for your app and we sponsor 50% of neynar API cost for you.)

What pain points? You're just accepting $DEGEN instead of USDC or WETH, there's no real technical hurdle here. And the liquidity thing doesn’t really hold up either, almost everyone on Farcaster has $DEGEN in their wallet already. It’s probably the easiest token to support if you're building for this crowd.

I launched few products exclusively with $DEGEN

But as a dev, wish few things are easy for builders and there are few pain points addressed.

🎩 first, but I like being part of this experiment that is Farcaster 🌶️

well you are right about the latter points for sure (most tokens won't last). 

it is an interesting opportunity but I just don't know how Clanker would work it in, but would be epic for everyone if they did!

It also splits the ecosystem. If we all just used $DEGEN, it’d bring everything together, boost our visibility in rankings, and make the whole space stronger. Most of these tokens won’t even last or get listed anywhere. Kinda feels like a waste.

I think most of the top mini apps are using their own tokens strategically for their own model, most of which are Clankers.

$QR $NOICE $BETR etc.  they build attention loops by either getting people to hold a certain amount ($BETR, $NOICE) or rewarding people when they open the mini app ($QR).  and these attention loops help their own token's outlook. 

If there was a way to do something with Clanker it would be interesting.

Needs more onchain liquidity — you can’t really conduct an economy on a low liquidity MoE

friendly neighborhood shitcaster // working on @pinetree

That’s fair. But “without problems” is a stretch. What’s the price impact of a $1M buy?

It’s a chicken and egg problem. Why would I use a non-standard MoE with lower liquidity if I can use weth or usdc?

Vibes and “we were first” aren’t really good answers

Not quite right. Liquidity’s never really been an issue, you can easily buy or sell hundreds of thousands, even millions worth of $DEGEN without problems. The screenshot you posted is just one pool. DEGEN is actually one of the most liquid tokens on Base overall. Of course, if you're comparing it to WETH it’ll look smaller, but that’s kind of a weird benchmark. Farcaster mini-apps aren’t pushing serious volume yet, so the idea that DEGEN lacks the liquidity to support them doesn’t really hold up.

Framedl

i default to eth for minting in framedl, cause it's just one step (no need for approval)

otherwise /framedl economy runs on degen

$degen made me stay. Hat Stays on 🎩💜

What are the benefits. Wouldn’t it just be fees going back to the creators of the token instead of the miniapp creator themselves?

I agree — $DEGEN should be the default. It's the token most of us use and trust here. Would be great to see more devs using it in mini apps.