@sushitrash

🔍 In-depth interpretation: Is Farcaster's shift to "wallet-first" a failure of SocialFi or an inevitable evolutionary path? Recently, Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero announced that the company's focus would shift to "wallet-first," sparking questions from the outside world about "abandoning social features" and the "disproof of SocialFi." However, this is a serious misinterpretation. Based on product logic and industry trends, the following is a deep analysis of this strategic shift: 1️⃣ Eliminating misunderstandings: It's a functional upgrade, not a strategic retreat For active users, built-in wallets are not a sudden shift, but a natural upgrade of the user experience. • Solving pain points: Previously, using Frames or conducting on-chain interactions required switching to external wallets, creating a disjointed experience. • Scenario requirements: As Frames evolve into complex Mini Apps, users need a seamless interaction experience like WeChat Mini Programs. • Core positioning: Wallets are incremental, not a substitute; they are a foundational capability complementing social networks. 2️⃣ Returning to first principles: Searching for the PMF of encrypted social networks A purely "decentralized Twitter" is difficult to attract the masses. Farcaster's daily active users have already reached the ceiling of "pure social." • Differentiated competition: According to Yu Jun's formula "Product value = (new experience - old experience) - migration cost," encrypted social networks must offer experiences that Web2 cannot provide. • Value flow: Since pure chatting cannot defeat Twitter, we must return to the first principles of encryption - serving value flow. Enabling the issuance, discovery, dissemination, and trading of assets within the same app is the true moat of the industry. 3️⃣ Industry trends: The mutual pursuit of social and wallets Current consumer-level encrypted applications are showing a clear trend of "convergence": • Social apps becoming wallet-centric: Farcaster, Telegram, and DeBox are all building in-app wallets to support transaction needs and ecosystem applications. • Wallet apps becoming social-centric: Zapper, Zerion, and Base App are integrating social graphs and content streams, attempting to turn "use-and-leave" tools into sticky networks. 4️⃣ Farcaster's new form: Super app + infrastructure • As a client: Through "built-in wallets + Mini Apps," Farcaster is evolving from a single social media to an "encrypted super app" integrating games, trading, and prediction markets. • As a protocol: The open social graph is becoming an industry infrastructure, directly integrated by wallets like Zapper, amplifying the network effect of the protocol. 💡 Summary Farcaster isn't dead - it's just stepping out of the comfort zone of "small but beautiful." "Wallet-first" isn't about abandoning social features, but recognizing that without built-in value flow, social networks are doomed to fail to achieve large-scale growth in the crypto world. This isn't a detour, but a crucial leap from the "handicraft era" (external wallets) to the "industrial era" (native closed loops). https://paragraph.com/@luochang/walletizing-the-social-socializing-the-wallet

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