Nearchos

The Farcaster ecosystem largely revolves around two main providers: Merkle Manufactory (MM) and Neynar. Both offer services that span the full stack, from low-level infrastructure (like Snapchain nodes) to end-user clients and miniapp tooling. I consider node improvements, specs, and documentation part of their offering in this context.

This creates a resource allocation dilemma. As a startup with limited time and engineers, you naturally focus where ROI is highest. Right now, that seems to be at the top of the stack: ROI = end user growth.

But this focus narrows innovation. While low-level infra allows many creative paths, the higher up you go, the fewer options you have. MM and Neynar appear to prioritize miniapps, wallets, and small UX features (like profile banners or max number of cast embeds). This is also reflected in the uneven documentation quality (ex., there is a dedicated website for miniapp development, 99% of the documentation is about using js/ts, the migration from hubble to snapchain is hardly reflected in the docs, and so on).

The result: it’s increasingly difficult to build anything truly new. If you’ve tried using the low-level stack, you’ve likely hit countless friction points: a small detail here, a small detail there, a change that has not reached the docs yet, FIPs that would have made your life much easier but are of low priority, design decisions optimized for quick user growth and not DX.

I know the answer: demand is king. 

I generally agree. But, maybe user growth is in places not on the path already laid out. And my concern is that diverging from this path, is getting harder and harder.

Great discussion in here about the growth vectors of Farcaster as a protocol.

It's a long hard path to build decentralized infra. There's always more that should be done than there is time to do, so you have to just decide what is going to get done and what's going to get kicked down the road.

These decisions make or break the protocol adoption curve.

I'm glad I don't have to make these decisions.

Someday it'll have to be more than just the MM team that makes them, but for now who else is going to do it? There's no incentive that would attract this level of contributor. All we have are armchair experts like myself shouting from the stands.

For now, we follow the leaders!