In recent years, many crypto projects have attempted to create decentralized social media platforms, but most have struggled to attract users due to the dominance of traditional giants. Friend.tech, which once took the market by storm, has seen its daily active users (DAU) shrink by 97%. However, Farcaster, founded in 2020 by former Coinbase engineer Dan Romero and receiving a $30 million investment led by a16z in 2022, has defied the odds. According to data from Dune Analytics, its DAU has grown by more than 10 times since entering 2024, and even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik has published several exclusive articles on Farcaster.

So, what are the features of this Farcaster that has garnered the attention of Vitalik and a16z? In this week's Cryptosnap, Dr.DODO will take you on a journey to discover Farcaster, the king of Web3 Social projects. ****

What is Farcaster?

Farcaster is a decentralized social networking protocol designed to provide users with a more open, free, and secure social experience. By breaking away from the limitations of centralized server social application giants such as Facebook, Twitter, or Weibo, Farcaster reshapes the landscape of traditional social media through innovative blockchain technology.

In the Farcaster ecosystem, users have their own decentralized identity (FID), allowing them to freely migrate data between various social applications and truly control their social assets. At the same time, Farcaster adopts a distributed data storage architecture and privacy protection technologies like end-to-end encryption, ensuring the security and privacy of user data to the greatest extent possible.

Farcaster's Technical Aspects

On the technical side, Farcaster has built a solid infrastructure for decentralized social networks through a series of innovative solutions.

The Farcaster social network encompasses three layers: the identity layer, the data layer, and the application layer.

1. Identity Layer: Based on Ethereum, it determines the permissions for operations on the network, with identity and authentication at its core.

2. Data Layer: It stores information authorized by the identity layer and ensures its availability.

3. Application Layer: It consumes the information from the data layer to provide services to users.

At the identity layer, Farcaster introduces usernames (names) and Farcaster IDs (FIDs) for users. FID is a unique numeric identifier bound to an Ethereum address, which is tamper-proof. Users can choose to register a username and bind it to their FID for convenience, but usernames are managed by a separate contract and may be reclaimed, while FIDs are permanent. FIDs can also be used for identity recovery. Users can preset another address as a recovery credential, which can be their other wallet, a trusted friend's address, or even a third-party custodial institution.

At the data layer, thanks to FIDs, when users receive messages, they can verify the binding relationship between the signing address and the FID on-chain to confirm the message source. To avoid private key management issues, Farcaster introduces the concept of signers. Signer keys are generated off-chain by users, and only their public keys need to be registered on-chain, while private keys can be used for signing.

Regarding data storage, unlike centralized applications that use servers to store data, Farcaster allows users to back up each other's data, which is stored in nodes called Hubs. To suppress spam, Farcaster charges users an annual rent for data storage. This serves as the main revenue source for the protocol and encourages users to delete low-value data, improving network quality. As for the application layer, unlike Twitter or Facebook, Farcaster is not a direct social application but a lower-level social protocol. Anyone can build front-end applications based on Farcaster, as long as they follow the protocol rules. Protocol changes are made through FIPs (Farcaster Improvement Proposals), which are executed after being accepted by developers, application providers, and users, without a mandatory voting mechanism or veto power.

Farcaster Application

As mentioned earlier, Farcaster is not a single social application but a protocol. Currently, there are several front-end applications based on Farcaster, among which Wrapcast, with a Twitter-like front-end style, is the most widely used and is also the one Ethereum co-founder Vitalik uses. Let's introduce the existing Farcaster ecosystem applications in a list format:

1. Warpcast:

   • The social application with the largest user base in the Farcaster ecosystem

   • User interface and experience similar to Twitter

   • Supports the publishing and interaction of various rich media content

2. Searchcaster:

   • A search engine service based on Farcaster

   • Users can retrieve content through keywords, tags, etc.

   • Supports multi-dimensional information retrieval of users, topics, applications, etc.

3. Yup:

   • Social aggregation

   • Allows users to cross-post content to Twitter and Lens

4. Jam:

   • The first dApp to introduce the concept of "Friends Token" to Lens and Farcaster

   • Provides personal subscription functionality similar to Friend.tech

5. Alphacaster:

   • A DAO community voting and governance tool

   • Classifies communities based on users' wallet asset types, and users can only post in corresponding communities if they hold specific assets

Of course, there are still many Farcaster ecosystem applications under development, and this article only lists a few examples with more users and representativeness.

Farcaster Frames

Source: https://docs.farcaster.xyz/learn/what-is-farcaster/frames

When talking about Farcaster applications, one cannot ignore the Frame feature, which is the biggest driver of Farcaster's recent explosive growth. Frame is a revolutionary innovation in the Farcaster ecosystem that allows developers to seamlessly embed various interactive mini-programs into users' social content. Through Frame, users can directly participate in rich application experiences such as games, voting, NFT minting, e-commerce shopping, etc., while browsing social information feeds. This "composability" completely breaks down the barriers of traditional social media, turning social networks into an infinitely expandable super app.

After the launch of Frame, it has greatly improved the playability of Farcaster. Developers can easily combine their creativity with social scenarios to reach more potential users.

Author's Perspective

In the author's experience of using many decentralized social applications, Wrapcast can be said to have the best user experience, almost equal to the smoothness of centralized applications. Another powerful aspect of Farcaster is that it has attracted Vitalik, a heavyweight KOL. The reason why social applications are difficult to develop is that the first-mover advantage is too great. When most people are expressing their opinions on Twitter, of course, no one wants to use Wrapcast. However, it's a different story when Vitalik only publishes his opinions on Farcaster!

In the author's view, the decentralized social track is certainly not as grand a narrative as AI or the BTC ecosystem, but from the perspective of airdrops, the author believes that Farcaster airdrops are much easier to use. Every day, you only need to post the content you originally intended to share on other social networks to Farcaster. When the token is issued, you may be rewarded. This is much more convenient than interacting with other dApps. So, use Farcaster more in your spare time!