“Conflating Farcaster 'the protocol' with Farcaster 'the social media platform built on top of the protocol' limits people's perspective on what can be built on Farcaster.”

I think this mistake even exists at the protocol level. User data, links, verifications are the core social primitives that can be integrated into almost every app

Casts and reactions almost feel too opinionated to sit alongside those primitives and they dominate the cost of participating in the network as a validator

It’s more than just the primitives, it’s the way they are integrated and delivered.

You can have user data, links, and verifications at the HTTP level and not even use FC.  So why do people use FC?  Because there is an opinionation that has been wrapped together in a usable package.

All this to say there is no value to the network (and being a validator for said network) without these opinionations.

Startup artist seeking inspiration.  Champion of /bcard

i'm not suggesting they shouldn't exist at the protocol level. i fully agree the content is what we're all here for and the distribution that the protocol provides is the core of the network

it's essentially a nit on the architecture being inefficient and raising the costs of building on the protocol i.e. onboarding users is expensive and running infrastructure is also expensive

i just think casts and reactions should essentially have their own separate storage with different guarantees than those primitives that are shared across all use cases