Stephan on Farcaster

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Stephan pfp

i give farcaster a hard time because i'm dissatisfied with the status quo of online social and feel like we have a genuine opportunity to do things differently this is why it frustrates me when farcaster leans into the same things that make traditional online social shitty thinking about it more i realized i don't actually know what farcaster is trying to achieve. does it want to solve fair distribution for creators? does it want to solve deplatforming and censorship? does it want to be a mini app platform? does it want to be a place where people make genuine connections? does it want to be a place people go for entertainment? does it want to be a composable social graph? does it want to be an app for people to discover crypto apps? i genuinely have no idea. this vacuum of direction invites people to shape their own narratives about farcaster and leads to everyone being disappointed when decisions are made that don't align with their idea of what it should be

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Stephan pfp

Being “sufficiently decentralized” doesn’t mean anything at best and means decentralization LARPing at worst

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Dan Romero pfp

1 billion plus people using the protocol every day. We get there by figuring out how to grow retained daily active users sustainably. As users grow, developers have increased incentive to build new apps and services. Creating more options of users. Eventually, you get to a flywheel. Not close to that yet. Need to figure out what will grow retained daily active users. All of the other properties you cite are downstream of user growth in terms of importance. Reasonable to argue that we could “rug” the promise, but we’ve been clear for last 5 years we view success as building a successful protocol.

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Steve pfp

@stevedylandev.eth

It’s interesting because I think to some extent Farcaster does want all of that, but they’re taking the approach of doing whatever it takes to grow first (locked in because of VC funding) and then possibly gain the benefits afterwards. The other approach which arguably has been done before is building slowly but staying firm to the promises and benefits (bootstrap or dao). It’s hard to say which will actually win or be effective in the long run, and defining “win” or “effective” is pretty key as well.

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Ace pfp

interesting cast. I was talking to @linda and @yekim yesterday about "atomic unit of content" - instagram filtered photos, sc ephemeral msging, musically/tiktok music default videos. making mini apps as easy making a meme coin or posting a photo stands out to me as a unique opportunity and remix game was a good showcase. it's a tough mission but worth solving somehow

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GIGAMΞSH pfp

Good critique. In Merkle’s defense, most users have no idea what they want. Or they claim to want things but act differently.

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Garrett pfp

What is the north star? idk

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Matthew Fox 🌐 pfp

Matthew Fox 🌐

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justin.ahn.eth pfp

when i joined, i thought it was this: does it want to be a composable social graph? upon joining, i thought it was this: does it want to be a place where people make genuine connections? (but mostly because it was super cozy at the time) after a few years though, i've no clue (even though i still really like it here)

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Zenigame pfp

quick take yes - solve deplatforming and censorship - fair distribution for creators yes because it needs a zeitgeist niche - mini apps - discover crypto apps yes because it's inherently social - connection & entertainment

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basil (propagation arc) pfp

basil (propagation arc)

for years basil has said control your narrative or others will write it for you

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azb pfp

yeah https://farcaster.xyz/azbest/0x62490d1e

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frdysk pfp

Recent thought on fc is they want to become the onchain superapp like wechat in china, that is whenever you think of stablecoin/onchain/web3, you think of farcaster I guess it's like chicken and egg, grow dau first or grow function first

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𒂭_𒂭 pfp

I've been reflecting on market force and structure as it presents an alternative to more institutional governance. right now, it seems prudent to subdivide Store of Value into institutional control (like treasury companies) and agentic control (like tipping). the symptoms of the "hard time" that I see people having with all online social is some overexposure by ulterior design. for example, people complain about labels (https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol/discussions/216), because they are app-level and not the same as user-based emoji reactions (https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol/discussions/89). both can be negative abuse vectors, both can be hidden by one app or the other, but one is more centralized, so that choice and its consequences are acceptable? just looking at X or Bluesky is frustrating, because one faction or another is brigading or being facilitated. why would leaning on the more controllable lever produce global results? it's very difficult to be agentically liberal with the "free speech is not free distribution" when it's one-sided like that. on the other hand, most people reveal a preference for positive proximity. and furthermore, an overwhelming majority of users aren't desperate to assimilate, they're not lining up for institutional announcements. most users want validation. they're busy people that settle for superficial succor, fuel for their beliefs over their concerns. they're sitting on resources for garage sales and gigs, rather than looking forward to ads and data-entry on their choice of videoscroller. a while ago, I brought up the need for region-specific clients to buffer culture clash. if Base is sincere about onboarding millions of content creators, it doesn't make sense to funnel every class of agency to one chain of supermarkets for a vanity metric like gross engagement. that way, we see the mini-apps are kinda generic or derivative, and the "winners" are like ivy league entrants, insofar as there must be a much bigger runner-up institution, underneath. what's the edge over big platforms with the leisure to split audience by algorithm? this is where NFTs as community badges really flourished, and a similar abstraction percolates across video platforms like tiktok/youtube, as self-referential language. *these stop thriving when the institution pushes lingua franca over vernacular* back to the original point. are we just sitting back and applauding the same rogue's gallery for lifestyle, or asset accumulation? I think a particular crowd settles for that, not the general public. I think global "layer zero" of social media is chapter-based, and consumer-patrons may group around one house of creators, but are they indentured or tithing their life's value in that direction? I think it's an inferior exchange compared to some town with regulars of some local third place referencing the grapevine between all agents of nearby workplaces who know and subcontract each other. there can be modest growth with unimpressively positive cash growth, but that moves more genuine culture forward in aggregate. maybe the concentration is the best attempt at institutional direction with asymmetric return, maybe SoV spikes for the few with the most skin in the game. but it's timing the market, not time in the market, and it's not retentive. at some point, even big platforms need to make history that's referenced, and one can argue that they fail to capture that kind of attention, as very few users will recall anything but the title of the lore. I don't think the answer is to design retreats like paywalls, artificial companionship, or any other self-defeating feature. there must be many capita of values that should be schlepped to the local bazaar, not some direct mecca to global dominion.

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Nicholas <AESC> pfp

Nicholas <AESC>

always a good time to revisit meditations on moloch

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wake pfp

well said. I am also confused.

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kompreni 🚂 pfp

Based on the talk at Farcon I believe the north star is a network where you can make an income (as a creator, as a builder, as a XYZ). That excited me. Network GDP as a north star feels right.

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Chris Carlson pfp

@chrislarsc.eth

the only thing there's no compromise on is using the protocol. everything else is fair game until dau goes up.

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hunter pfp

https://farcaster.xyz/bfresh/0x78597e59

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Ashis pfp

This is such an important reflection. Farcaster's strength is its openness but without a clear north star, that openness can feel like aimlessness. If it tries to be everything at once, it risks becoming nothing to anyone. Alignment on purpose isn't just branding, it's how communities thrive.

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