Built on the premise of "read, write, own," Web3, as the next iteration of the internet, is currently in build mode, aiming to decentralize everything, including social media. The narrative of "The future of social media is decentralized" has introduced new players in the industry who are attempting to disrupt the centralized power of Meta, X, and others.
We witnessed the viral growth of Friend.tech last summer, which we covered here. Now, six months later, Farcaster and its Warpcast and Frames have emerged as the new hype in town, marking a 400% growth in daily active users (DAU) and total revenue surging to $600,000.
The big difference between Friend.tech and Warpcast is that Warpcast doesn't need you to keep buying stuff all the time to use the basic features. But what is Warpcast and how does it work?
First things first, let's dive in. 👇
<aside> 🔒 Farcaster is a decentralized social media protocol that champions privacy and interoperability, prioritizing user control over their online presence.
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This stands in contrast to web2 social media apps, which are often driven by shareholder interests and corporate centralization.
Thanks to this protocol, developers can build applications with new features on the network, while users can seamlessly migrate their social identities across applications. This capability is not possible, for instance, between user accounts on Meta and Twitter.
Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, both former Coinbase executives, launched Farcaster in 2020. Their project received a seed round investment of an undisclosed amount in January 2023.
Romero, the 20th employee at Coinbase, was responsible for leading functions such as customer support, partnerships, operations, and consumer relations. Meanwhile, Varun served as a director at Coinbase, where he built product and engineering teams over a four-year period.
<aside> 🔒 Farcaster is built on Optimism, an L2 blockchain processing transactions in batches powered by optimistic rollups.
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Its hybrid architecture allows for the integration of on-chain and off-chain storage mechanisms, ensuring that user identity data is securely stored on-chain while interaction data and posts are kept off-chain.
Farcaster's network of servers, called 'Hubs' offers consistent and reliable data storage. Additionally, the rental model for data storage enhances the network's performance and reduces spam. Smart contracts provide an additional level of security.