I received $125 in Farcaster leaderboard rewards this week (!) because people have been willing to take a chance on a newbie’s content. Now I’m paying that forward.

For the next 24 hours, I’m challenging myself to like 125 casts from different Farcasters I don’t follow, have <100 followers, and whose cast I genuinely find interesting. $1 via Noice per like.

I’ll start browsing in channels like /welcome and /100club. Please send any other channel, starter pack, or user recommendations my way. 🤍

Final update: After a slow start in the primary feeds and channels, I looked at every person on the rewards leaderboard. Yes, I looked at the casts of 3,000 accounts today. Across my entire search, I came across 203 users I wasn't already following and have <100 followers.

I viewed more than 4,000 casts and only found 37 casts that fit my original criteria. I've decided to split the $125 reward among those 37 casts using likes with Noice. Why so few compared to my goal?

Ultimately, I did not compromise on my original criteria:

(1) cast by an account I don't follow already,
(2) has <100 followers, and
(3) I find genuinely interesting.

I didn't intend to prove any point about the algorithm, and I'm not sure it does. I simply wanted to pay my rewards forward. But going down this insane little rabbit hole sparked ideas + questions for me about new user discovery here, which I'll share eventually.

For now, I'll include links to those 37 casts in a reply below.

Hey all, updating here for transparency that I'm looking into a bug with the @noiceapp team. I'm finding discrepancies between my 37 likes, what's confirmed in Noice, and what's confirmed in my wallet activity.

First I'll attempt to get it right via Noice, and then will send directly via wallets if I can't.

Building a little space by the ocean. More information at /thenextwave coming soon.