Farcaster is a “sufficiently decentralized” desocial protocol. Unlike Twitter and other centralized apps where users sign up with email/phone numbers, Farcaster users sign up with private-public key pair or more precisely an Ethereum address.
The on-chain aspect of Farcaster is limited to identity; every user mints a unique Farcaster ID NFT (FID) to participate. This is their permanent ID in the Farcaster protocol. Users sign msgs with their keys, mapping all their content to their FID. As FID lives on Ethereum it is censorship resistant.
The actual content (ie. the social graph) is stored in the off-chain Farcaster network run by Hubs. Hubs are like Ethereum nodes. Anyone can run a Hub. Hubs gossip messages to each other and frequently sync to have a consistent view of the network.
The first client built on Farcaster is a Twitter-like application called Warpcast https://warpcast.com/ but one can imagine there to be many other social apps; Instagram, Youtube, Substack etc. What’s really cool about desocial is;
- Users can migrate their followers from one app to another. Apps can’t gatekeep users’ social graphs.
- Novel experiences that combine social activity with on-chain data. There are 6k Warpcast users who collectively own 75m $ worth of on-chain assets.
- No platform risk for app developers.
I expect desocial as a vertical to grow drastically, and I find Farcaster to be ahead of competition.
If you want to keep track of this ecosystem you can (i) look out for our upcoming desocial report, (ii) check out the Farcaster apps here https://farapps.farcase.xyz/ and user traction here https://farcaster.network/), but more importantly try it out yourself. The access atm is gated, invite only. if you hit me up on telegram; @gurelcan I’m happy to see if I can get you a link.