👉🏻 You may not know that Vitalik may not post on Twitter every day, but he will post a few updates on Farcaster almost every day. What exactly is Farcaster?
Let’s talk about what Farcaster is today!
1. What is Farcaster
Farcaster is not a social platform, but a decentralized social protocol based on the Ethereum architecture. Account data is stored and managed on Optimism L2.
Farcaster itself is not a platform, nor is it a client. It is a purely decentralized protocol that supports various third-party clients, similar to the email protocol. Users can freely choose applications to interact with the Farcaster network for data.
💡 Core Concept:
It allows users to have complete control over their online identity and user data, rather than having platform companies master and control user data like traditional social media platforms.
Users can own and control their content and personal data, ensuring that this information will not be abused or censored by the platform, and that there will be no arbitrary bans or traffic restrictions.
2. Team Background
Farcaster was co-founded in 2021 by Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan.
Both founders came from Coinbase and have rich technical and entrepreneurial backgrounds. Dan Romero was a senior executive at Coinbase, responsible for international expansion and product management, and Varun Srinivasan was the engineering director at Coinbase, responsible for multiple core engineering projects.
A while ago, it completed a US$150 million financing round led by Paradigm and a16z, with a valuation of US$1 billion.
3. How to use Farcaster
1️⃣ Register
If you don't have a Farcaster account, you need to register one first. You can use the invitation link:
https://warpcast.com/~/invite-page/812034?id=bb332eea
(Note: There is a $5 fee to register a Farcaster account)
2️⃣ Download the client
The client I use is warpcast, which is also the version used by V God. Of course, you can also choose other third-party clients. They all interact with the Farcaster social network protocol, and the data is interoperable. It doesn't matter.
Other clients: farcaster.xyz, Broadcast, jam.so, etc.
3️⃣ Release content: Cast
Taking Warpcast as an example, you can earn Warp points by choosing Cast to post, or liking and interacting with your favorite bloggers. Perhaps Warp points are one of the weights that determine how much airdrops will be in the future, so just have more positive interactions.
4️⃣ Some limitations
I found that Farcaster still does not support the publication of long articles, but only supports short message updates, and has a strict limit on the length of the content.
Farcaster posts are limited to 320 characters, perhaps to encourage brevity while ensuring efficient information delivery.
In a decentralized network, shorter content also helps reduce the burden of storage and dissemination, especially when using decentralized storage systems such as IPFS 🤔
If you need to publish longer content, consider breaking up the post into multiple parts or linking to external content.
4. Airdrop Expectations
There are many rumors now that Farcaster will issue coins and have airdrops.
However, the rules of these airdrops are still a mystery. My personal suggestion is not to have multiple accounts, just manage your main account well. Even if you want to have multiple accounts, make them premium accounts, otherwise it will be more troublesome to be witched (after all, one account also has a $5 activation cost)
💡 Last words
If you are also a content creator on platforms such as Twitter, then you might as well update Farcaster at the same time as updating Twitter. Just treat it as a low-cost way to make money. At the same time, you can also expand your influence in new channels. It is not a bad choice. Vitalik is using it, so why not give it a try? 😂
