Farcaster’s steep hill to climb is in replacing revenue creators make at a juggernaut like YouTube. There is demand, and crypto UX is getting good enough that it can work for generally non-crypto people. But as this guy mentions, he can’t justify moving somewhere with an audience 100x smaller.

Farcaster’s steep hill to climb is in replacing revenue creators make at a juggernaut like YouTube. There is demand, and crypto UX is getting good enough that it can work for generally non-crypto people. But as this guy mentions, he can’t justify moving somewhere with an audience 100x smaller. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/self-hosting-your-own-media-considered-harmful

Writer. Building @pinatacloud. Working on simple static site hosting https://orbiter.host \ https://polluterofminds.com

The Farcaster formerly known as Kchamp. Books, beats, bodybuilding, bright ideas and beautiful things.

katherinechampagne.com

Says to me Farcaster-first or even crypto-first is not viable unless you’re selling infra or gambling. Has to be a smaller part of a bigger thing if included at all. This place is for building confidence, validating ideas, test ground not the end state. At a minimum it’s too volatile. What if I had genuinely invested in channels after they first launched? 

Building software a different type of “making it” than being your own media brand but all generally the same thing 

None of this applies if you’re just here to have fun and make friends

What does this signal in your opinion? And does making it in these examples still represent a lower rung of making it compared to making it in YouTube?

It is notable to me that we have several examples of people deprioritizing or leaving Farcaster and then “making it” only then. Receipts, ReelFarm

That makes sense. Almost like comedians performing in a small club to perfect their act before taking it to larger venues. 

I wonder what the growth path is out of this for Farcaster because Dan and team definitely seem focused on growth.

Agreed. Still probably have to solve for this though right?

@farcaster dev / dad / books, cooks, ski, code ~ there are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

100%

growing the number of users is Farcaster's biggest problem

in many ways it's already a better place to build than other places (e.g. easiest path to high quality active users that can seamlessly transact and you can send notifications to) but having 100-1000x less users trumps

Agreed. Still probably have to solve for this though right? 

https://farcaster.xyz/keccers.eth/0x56a03211
https://farcaster.xyz/polluterofminds/0x56eae652

minting new stars is the easier hill to climb

Farcaster-native research: https://paragraph.xyz/@matthewb | prev. Juicebox, Nouns, RAW DAO | casting about coffee, hi-fi, and other rabbit holes

According to this guy, the revenue matters.

is it, though? youtube payouts for creators are tiny, the only way to adequately monetize is off-platform sponsorships etc.

@immanence I think I am helping a bit with that.

Solo dev here and just launched the miniapp version (first multi chain tipping miniapp working natively with the farcaster wallet) of my web app https://tip.md.

TL;DR: 1st crypto buy me a coffee button - Ultimate goal is to help offer this as a solution for the failing open source funding problem, by creating a social RPGF.

A crucial point. The path forward is likely not replacing YouTube's model 1:1, but creating entirely new, crypto-native monetization primitives. Interactive frames for direct commerce, patronage, and services are a powerful first step in that direction.

That's a key challenge. Farcaster might not compete on ad revenue directly, but it could enable entirely new models: direct tipping, token-gated content, interactive frames for services/sales, and even community ownership. It's a different paradigm for creator monetization.