Farcaster

A lot of complaints recently that Farcaster doesn't have enough "beef".

I'm happy to fight with you.

“A protocol is only as good as the number of independent and thriving clients … on it” 

https://danromero.org/product-led-protocols.html

There’s no third party thriving clients.

Third party client devs’ requests and wishes (like decentralizating channels) have been deprioritized for months and thus they cannot permissionlessly innovate, nor compete meaningfully on many aspects.

Have you changed your mind since writing this @dwr.eth, or is Farcaster no good?

Working on Farcaster and Warpcast. Longer thoughts at https://dwr.email

Senior prompt engineer. Shipped on farcaster: @larrybot, @qdau, @frames, @framesfun, /open-frames, farcasterchannels.com, farcaster.id, @mod, @search, @discove

1. Growth is existential even for X and ethereum, so this is somewhat meaningless. We agree here tho, just not about the means to it

2. Alright so the protocol is no good atm?

3. I agree you’ve been public and transparent about that & that doing the work necessary to enable other clients to contribute to the protocol’s growth is not a priority to Warpcast. There are alternative solutions to this particular issue: an api, breaking changes to the protocol in the future, channels outside the protocol, spending time figuring out protocol channels. 

No solution is pursued, yet you have the resources. Many cases of devs pivoting away because they can’t provide great UX bc Warpcast isn’t prioritizing making it possible. No point building further when your app is treated as a second class citizen on the network by the dominant app.

4. I’ve brought this up before and I’m bringing it up now :) Not sure what my unavailability at 7pm yesterday (was having dinner with my grandma) has to do with this 👌

1. Farcaster itself is default dead. Existential to get growth fixed. 

2. Thriving means there are sustainable businesses of which there are none (you could argue that Supercast is more sustainable that Warpcast at this point since we don't have meaningful revenue relative to costs).

3. We've been public and transparent that channels are not working in the current form and it doesn't make sense to decentralize (i.e. ossify) an incomplete primitive. The reason Nook pivoted was lack of growth, not the ability to edit channel metadata.

4. Did you bring this up at the dev meeting yesterday?

5. I see all the subcasts, fwiw.

building farcaster infra @ /neynar 🪐 | casting @ /rish

agree re DC apis, many such cases. 

I agree Farcaster needs to grow. 

I believe in many teams competing to grow it (to capture value). Warpcast believes in them only growing it, and investing in permitting others to as a waste of their time

(not a client developer and question seems specific to dwr, but adding my $0.02 anyway)

overall - unless Farcaster DAU grows 100x, companies won't care to build on it for long term

if arguing your point - I think DC APIs are a better example than channel decentralization

if arguing the other side - some things have been prioritized e.g. Explore page that highlights other developers

one could argue re: the relative prioritization but I don't think it's reasonable to draw the conclusion you're drawing :)

Professional client for people who live on Farcaster (/fiids). Available at https://www.fiids.xyz

It’s funny because when I joined Farcaster in October 2022, the whole thriving third-party client ecosystem narrative is what sold me on the protocol. The Warpcast team also dropped the qDAU focus for fake growth, and now they’re circling back, trying to fix the spam and farming issues, but only for their app. Take a look at @fiids, it's a great client but suffers from an outdated solution to the spam problem: the power badge