Sunday AMA - ask me anything on your mind or share your most recent annoyance with farcaster 


Will reply by EoD!

Technowatermelon. Elder Millenial. Building Farcaster. 

nf.td/varun

Chasing Curiosity. People, Nature, Machines. Hakuna Matata, "Its a problem-free philosophy.”

How do you handle exploring stuff to learn? Just make it a main quest for a bit or it's in service of said main quest? Tangible example your dive into the Facebook spam papers

Avoid side quests.

Know what your main quests are and focus on them.

How do you balance health, family, work, and relationships? Looking for a non-generic answer :)

Elevating onchain creators 

@nodefoundation @brightmoments 
@ampsfun

- 1:1 tutoring or expert advice
- ChatGPT 
- YouTube videos 
- read a book 

Some combination of above depending on how critical the skill is

What is your process for teaching yourself something new?

Normie truned into degen in FC | I'm mostly JK | Host /venting /burrfrens | mod /impact /byegary

I knew you had good music taste! I’m guessing Shine on you crazy diamond is all parts of it and not one part lol

- comfortably numb
- great gig in the sky 
- shine on you crazy diamond

1. That CRDT based sync would scale to millions of DAU

2. 10 and 10. But I have changed my pov on what parts need to be decentralized, when and how 

3. Rarely have long term disagreements (maybe never?) but have a lot of short term ones about should we do X or Y this week

When Farcaster token? JK! 

1. What did you strongly believe about building Farcaster in Jan 2024 that you no longer believe? 
2. How important is it for Farcaster to be decentralized 1-10, give a number for Varun 2023 and for Varun 2025. 
3. What do you and Dan most consistently disagree on wrt building Farcaster?

musican. ai artiste. 

designed the channel icon for /relationships

Still thinking on it and processing peoples feedback

what's one change you'd make to warpcast if you were its benevolent dictator?

working on meta.matcha.xyz, yc alum, @orangedao

- organized into 3 teams crypto, social protocol
- one person on each team plays the role of lead to coordinate work
- i come in every day to a 30 min stand up with team with priorities 
- we figure out who works on what and ship and repeat 

we do designs, specs etc as needed based on complexity of feature. no formal process.

how are teams structured in merkle team to ships features asap? (eg 1 dev per feature, blokheim does design for every feature, everyone makes own KPI dashboard?)

do you make PRDs for features?

Digital Media Producer. I like particles and waves too. I like art.

Thank you, I appreciate you.  I’ve never had a reason to not trust you, so, I think I’m good, but I am also looking forward to reading the notion page! Thanks again

good question, will write up more details in the verifications notion page. 

tl;dr - it comes down to how much you trust our security. we'll provide as much detail as we can about it.

I was going to ask this during the dev call, but  I was also running a show, so couldn’t at the time. I’m all for the verifications that we’re going through, but what assurance do you have for us that there won’t be a massive data leak that points my wallet to my e-mail to my phone number?

How are these things being kept?

ai.jam.so  🔗
🐿️ Build creator economy with AI @jamai


Just an Artist🧑‍🎨 currently holding it all together with duct tape and good vibes

Everyone is aware of the lock up but not everyone is aware that they own a huge chunk of the supply and they can rug the token at any time.
But it is what it is I guess

I don’t think they lied or forced or deceived anyone at this point, which is my gut check for “is it a scam”. 

They have a token mechanic which doesn’t make sense to me - you have to lock up funds for a long time, they price may go down and they may sell while your funds are locked up . But they didn’t lie about this. 

Everyone is aware and can just not participate.

@jam project 
The fact that it's a completely obvious scam and your best response is basically 

If you dont like the way they scam don't participate

Artist from the future.

NFTs since 1998.

Bitcoin since 1985.

Your second favorite artist's second favorite artist.

https://manifold.gallery/tomato

I can't play videos that have sound in the android app without them becoming extremely jerky and eventually dashing the app.

which startup founder (one you've met in person, other than brian armstrong) has impressed you the most?

lets get to the best version faster - follow @1dolinski · challenge your habits · say hi to my ai here: https://getfirstresponder.com/talk/1dolinski

gotcha, thanks for the note — quick brain dump for open ended thoughts 


hear ya on prioritization and at the same time hear that daus are important 

I had understood channels to be a subreddit style, a home for people interested in niche topics and new comers to find a place to build a voice 

Seems there becoming more of a broadcast channel, similar to what  Instagram has in DMs 

For example, I’d like to post in /ai but there are 42 members and I’m not clear on how to join

If this is the case, I agree channels are niche and I’d even stretch to say they could prob be removed them from the sidebar 


Alternatively the tiktok style of no channels works, but it’s all about going viral which requires a pristine algorithm with visible views and likes to back it up

yes we've considered it, but have gotten some feedback in the opposite direction that its really overwhelming for some mods. 

seems like a more niche feature that some mods would use but not others, so lower down on the priority list for now.

Would you consider adding a request to join channel button?

- visible mods list / ai moderator on channel page
- button to request to join. ability for mods to approve / decline 
- programmatic gating to join channel to alleviate mod responsibility

Operator turned investor. Work in TradFi. Exploring the future of social investing @crossroads.  🟪

parallel processing (very slowly): 

- The Lessons of History 
- In A Free State

A laid back person who loves shitcasting and vibing with friends, and is supported by family (it means a lot)...

Bandung, Bandung City, West Java, Indonesia

Do you play mobile game? Tell me what a game?

Systems engineer, 10K/half-marathon runner, /appreciation mod /receipts

Mad Respect!  That kind of mileage takes a lot of self-discipline and cardio training. 🙌🏽

i dont really run much, i have bad knees + a knee injury, so i mostly bike. 

max ive done non stop is probably 20 miles.

What’s the most number of miles you’ve ever run without stopping or walking?🏃🏾

What's the overlap with World's Mini Apps and Farcaster's Mini Apps? Is there any, or is this going to be an unfortunate namespace battle?

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS.

shazow.net

Currently: WhatsABI

A lot of teams are building miniapps - telegram, world, base, farcaster. 

There is no namespace battle imo - every platform will have its own labeled miniapp store. 

The stands will overlap quite a bit so it’s easy for people to port apps, but they won’t be exactly the same due to differences between each platform

What's the overlap with World's Mini Apps and Farcaster's Mini Apps? Is there any, or is this going to be an unfortunate namespace battle?
https://docs.world.org/mini-apps

Designing /mismir | Experimenting in fashion, art, and tech | Exhibited in NYC ( x2 ), Las Vegas, Bucharest 🌹

What’s the most impactful book that you’ve ever read?🌹

We’ve had 5 open roles for a long time. Just happened that the right people were interested recently .

what was the trigger to double down on the recent hiring spree?