redphone on Farcaster

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Hot clown take: the new @base app is going to change the world. Here’s a raw, candid braindump on why, and what it means for the future of fintech, social, and app ecosystems 🧵

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For years, crypto has been building apps for the same narrow audience: degens, early adopters, and futurists. We’ve been in such a tight echo chamber that we forgot what real-world adoption might even look like. Now it’s here, screaming in our faces, and we don’t even see it.

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It’s one app with: - Mini apps - Social media - Shopify integration (including for brick-and-mortar) - USDC yield - Creating and monetizing games (via Remix, ex-@farcade) - Prediction markets - Natural language trading via @bankr $BNKR - P2P payments - Encrypted chat

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So who is Base app competing with? Knee-jerk reaction for a crypto native is Metamask or Phantom. But that’s not it. This is coming for Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, WhatsApp. We finally have a crypto-native answer to mainstream fintech: one where you own everything inside.

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This is Fintech 2.0. Brian and Jesse keep calling it the “Netscape moment”... that spark for the mass adoption of a radical new way of interfacing with the internet. And it’s literally what we’ve been dreaming about for a decade+.

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It’s crypto for normies. But more than that: it’s crypto faded completely into the background. The lead actor here isn’t $ETH or $BASE. It’s $USDC… quiet, stable, and understandable by everyone.

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Sidenote: I keep imagining I’m the CTO of some Web2 company, tasked with creating a “crypto strategy.” Where would I even begin? Most roads today lead to chaos, ghost chains, or paid shills pitching whatever L1 they’re tied to. It’s overwhelming.

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But now, there’s a publicly traded company offering a chain with sub-penny fees, sub-second speeds, and a product normies can actually use. Coinbase has brand power that even Binance and Gemini can’t touch. This isn’t another crypto wallet. This is a new internet front-end.

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That’s the macro picture. But let me zoom in for a minute: I’ve had beta access to the new Base app for a week (thanks @defiginger), and the moment that truly blew my mind was importing my @farcaster account.

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My posts and friends popped up, but with a totally different feed, algo, and interface. I’ve dreamed of portable identity and content ownership for years. This is the first time I’ve actually felt it. The era of centralized lock-in might finally be ending.

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Soon, I imagine they’ll add a tab in the social feed for @zora too: think Instagram, but every image post is tradable. This is what crypto-native social looks like: multiple social apps in one. Modular, composable, and portable across platforms.

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Think about what that means: Instead of walled gardens, we’ll open one app and get access to multiple social experiences. And if Base’s feed ever sucks? We leave. But we keep our history, our followers, our content… everything. That's never truly been possible until now.

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Crypto gave us control over our money. Decentralization is giving us control over our content. And now, it’s unlocking something else: What I’d call InteractionFi, or Incentivized Interactions.

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Apps like @noiceapp and @tipn let you automatically tip when you like someone’s post. @replyfarcaster lets you pay people when they reply to you (kind of reminds me of timedotfun). These tiny incentives change behavior and vibes completely.

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In using $NOICE and $TIPN, I’ve realized how it can change your psychology around using a social network. It’s like spreading love. It feels good, whereas clicking “like” on X comes with these weird considerations around the algorithm.

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Another aside: I blame Elon a bit here. I think he ruined some of the “like” vibes when he made your likes public for a while. It made us start thinking about why we were clicking likes (who’s going to see this? What effect might it have on the algo?)

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Likes became weaponized: more about signaling than genuine appreciation. Whereas on Farcaster, I know I’m tipping users, so it feels like I’m spreading goodness, hope, peace, love, and maybe not sex, but close.

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