Looking for feedback — the recent appearance on Bankless really seemed to resonate with people (got a lot of inbound)! 1. Was there a particular section that resonated with you? (Want to double down on repeating that messaging.) 2. What was unclear / confusing / not well articulated? YouTube timestamps appreciated
(Can be also on other podcasts / recent screenshot essays about Farcaster / Merkle strategy / etc.)
1. differences between Merkle + Farcaster Protocol 2. what is Merkle's strategy? To be the top Farcaster client?
The section at the end of the below video about crypto's seemingly evergreen "Netscape Moment" was really good content. https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1619741378552139778?s=20&t=LBSemwt9Sf6zftFYcfpsvg
"web2 is not broken" -> important for farcaster's value prop to stand on its own legs rather than in contrast to a "broken" web2
Number 1, the opening clip of you seems extremely concise, cohesive, and your hand and appearance communication felt inviting so that’s an easy way to open people to messages. Left me saying, okay I want to hear more of what this dude is talking about. I’ll take the rest off-line and send later.
✅ Bankless helped you reach a new audience ✅ Your tone was more humble and earnest vs a lot of typical messaging in the space of web2 is shit and web3 is the panacea ✅ Clear that FC team values product and understands how hard it is to build audience / community, —> not just build a protocol and magic will
the bit on sovereign ownership of your username (as opposed to Mastodon) was extremely powerful.
1. -Good balance betw showing you’re aligned w/ core tenets that Bankless likes to champion while also showing nuance (~“you have to take me on my word that we will decentralize…”) -Bankless audience seems newer to crypto (myself included) & loves hearing crypto OG wisdom / industry patterns 2. More on what h
1. Using existing FC user base to kick start new client user base 2. The dev/user flywheel: more devs more users more devs etc (might have been between the lines don’t recall details) 3. In general the UX/product focus
I liked that you mention not everything in web2 is broken + 1 for talking about sufficient decentralization would have been cool if you talked about monetizing it (not for you & @v but for the user base), even if no plans to ever do so I like that you're the least hype person in crypto building a social network 😎
For me the biggest gap is the delineation between client and protocol. I realize it's not the sexiest topic but more info on how developers could utilize the protocol or even high level info on what it offers would be great.
Web2 not broken Protocol vs. app, farcaster vs Merkle manufactory What’s on chain vs off chain Why protocols should think about monetization and your ideas (hypotheses/guesses-love your humility) Long termism
It was solidly encouraging to hear you provide the context for the last few cycles of Platform rugs that impacted proliferation of user driven utility and how farcaster is aligning value to builders to so that doesn’t happen again Your thesis on building the best is exactly the type of ecosystem I want to build in
Letting people to build on the protocol without being able to rug them. This is how we leapfrog Web 2.0 through mega innovation. 24:42
The idea of owning my relationship with followers, fans, friends… having millions of subscribers across social yet at the mercy of each platform for reach had me 😩. So I’m excited to create with Farcaster 🥳
I remember the overall explanation being fairly persuasive. You outlined the problems and possible solution patterns well. I had an invite to Farcaster in my inbox since early December. This finally convinced me to join.
I just started listening to it this afternoon & haven’t finished yet but it’s fantastic. I’ll listen to the rest w an ear for time stamps.
You said active users will get ported to mainnet. Does that mean I can't just keep lurking?
Nothing for #2 but the part(s) about owning your audience and having truly permissionless building made me extremely hopeful for the future If you’re building a client on twitter, 100% of your revenue could be gone overnight by then shutting off your access, so you accept that risk With FC you don’t have that ris
Great: - The entire explanation of the network effect and best environment for developers to build on top of FC - The difference between the protocol level and the client/hub level A little confusing for some a little less-technical like myself: - Use of client and hubs, are they thesame or different
For me it was: 1. Account ownership as NFTs 2. Minimizing on-chain footprint and focusing on what really matters to be on-chain
1. Farcaster being an open protocol that anyone can build on permissionlessly. More stories about big tech pulling plug on devs + talk about cool apps built on Farcaster. 2. Hubs and the 10k cast cap limit per user. Are older casts completely deleted or will someone still keep a record/index? This is important info.
The bit about web protocols lacking native financing at the protocol level.
Great episode! The Twitter discussion did not mention that the threat that got Twitter to close down was that someone would buy the most popular clients and replace the backend Is that a risk you see with Farcaster as well?
Whats preventing a client from capturing the protocol like how gmail captured most of email because of distribution monopoly?
I am skeptical about the stated plan to get to 1b users while charging them $10/year in ETH to be in the namespace Seems more reasonable to me to charge B2B to run clients that access the namespace once we get to critical mass of users but hey, skeptics are important!
15:44: when you mentioned the history that Twitter and Facebook were more “open” towards 3rd-party developers building on top of these platforms. It would really help someone who didn’t know this history to see the fundamental differences between Web2 and Web3 social networks.
Coming from working with another web3 social protocol I thought you highlighted the killer features well (driving switching costs to zero and forcing apps to compete on features/UX not who builds the best moat) Unanswered question for me is will developers be discouraged by the ability to lose a user base so quickly?
You and V have spokesperson superpowers.👏 The use cases that are uniquely web3 were powerful. More please. Framing FName as ‘like a domain name’ is 💪🏼. ‘Sovereign data’ is ironically weaker msg than ‘can’t be deplatformed’. Monetization✅ this is a must and will help devs know where the blue oce
Somewhat unrelated but charging for namespace becomes a fascinating area. Fnames become the .com equivalent and a name space can develop similar to tlds, where a .tk domain is regarded as spam although it’s free.
Great insights Dan! I found it very interesting the part on monetization and business model (Google paying Apple to show Google seerch bar as default), but I think you could expand more on the premium accounts,i didn't understand how they will be different from normal free accounts. Cheers!
Just got to watching. 1. Clients bringing value aside from (and abstracting) the protocol. The example with Absorb around 51:20 being able to offer functionality and success independent of FC while running its rails clearly shows the scaleability and modularity potential.