Warpcast is giving out $5 each day to the top 100 casters.  

Rewards are given based on the amount of engagement your casts get divided by the number of active followers you have. 

We'll run this experiment through the end of the year to see if it drives people to create more interesting content for Farcaster.

I’m trying to get my head into Merkle’s thinking here

I’m gonna do some thinking out loud 

From the supply perspective, that’s not enough money to really sting, but it’s not nothing. They could 5x it if they thought it really mattered or was a valuable experiment even and not materially impact their runway

For most recipients (very likely WEIRD, maybe even super rich), it’s not enough to matter. Not sure it’d even finance a daily Basepaint habit. 

So maybe they’re thinking that $5 is enough to serve as a seed for prestige and the competition will really be for bragging rights and not for the $5?

If the economic incentive is intended to mean something, it should be bigger. If it’s not, then why not just $1 or a trophy NFT? 

Seems like such an awkward half measure

That being said, huge credit to Merkle for the unflinching discipline to build a viable protocol/app/community without falling into the trap of magic tokenomics 

Can’t wait to read the post mortem in January