Network States

Farcaster is unironically more of a network state than 99% of existing NS projects. 

Farcaster is: 
- fully onchain
- an internet-first ideologically aligned community (as much as is possible for 1M+ FIDs)
- financially beneficial to highly active and engaging users
- a platform where people can crowdfund causes
- creating multi-day in-person gatherings (still working on crowdfunding these gatherings
- used by influential people who can potentially advocate real world practices in line with our community values

Web2/Web3 developer and builder of grassroots decentralized culture and governance. Not a maximalist of any kind. Writing this as I go.

what aspect is Farcaster missing, that would take it to the next level?

thinking more on how to accomplish this, farcaster is strong because of the network owning powerful products. Farcaster itself is not super powerful (4-10 employees?).

However, the fragmentation and lack of consensus on what apps to choose surrounding farcaster prevents a stronger sense of community. If the NS were truly powerful, everyone using farcaster would also be using a related pop up gathering app. And it’d be easy to form these popups. in the current state, we are only aligned on one part of the tech stack here.

Therefore, hypothesis is-a network state ideally self-hosts as many products as possible, to centralize power into a singular entity: insodoing, it can more effectively use its network to offer more services, such as a pop up gathering app.
-Sort of how microsoft does it. data persists across all apps.

I think there’s a pretty strong foundation that has a lot of room to be fleshed out, but I think the biggest thing that’s missing at this point is probably more pop-up gatherings.