Warpcast

Not financial advice

It's worth pointing out that trending onchain notifications do surface things early—in some cases.

This morning we sent a notification around 8:15am PT about a new coin $GHIBLIFY created by @nounishprof.

We had a bunch of people complain that this notification was bad and/or meant the coin had peaked.

However, hours later, a prominent celebrity on Twitter bought the asset via Bankr. And the price increased.

What does this mean?

- First: not every notification will keep increasing in price afterwards. Many will gown down in price!

- It does mean that our algo is surfacing onchain activity that many other people on Farcaster are doing.

- Additionally, we now surface additional information about coins like the creator, the date created and the cast that created it (when available)

- We're going to continue iterating on these notifications—thresholds to send, what information to provide—because many people find them useful.

- If they bother you, you're free to turn them off

Personal take:
Warpcast seems to be moving further away from mass adoption with each passing day. 

Maybe they will succeed in attracting a slice of CT (a target already motivated by economic incentives) but at the same time this is a GtM strategy that will likely exclude 99% of people. 

Hard to believe the whole Merkle team sees people this narrowly, so I think there are big chances that this strategy is intentional, at least for the short to mid term. They are sacrificing “normie” adoption to ensure growth numbera with “degens”.

@vocdoni, prev. Bitcoin Magazine | Purple #203 | Cohost: /diy /anthropology /vote /biohacking /cooperatives

We're trying to grow with cryptonatives and normies that are crypto curious.

Ultimately, we need to lean into what is differentiating (crypto). There's nothing inherently compelling about a decentralized social network for most people (beyond a small hardcore group of people).

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

> My mom has no clue the internet or email are quite decentralized, and she still uses them every day. She doesn’t have to care about that. She uses them because the interfaces built on top are useful and make her life easier. That’s what matters.

She uses email because it's a network effect and everyone uses it. Not because of the UI.

We have to get to a sufficient network effect.

Social networks are useful because of the people using them. Today, for better or worse, Farcaster is useful because cryptonatives use it

I get the decision of focusing on cryptonatives and the crypto-curious, but I’m not really buying it. Doesn’t feel like a winning GTM to put all the eggs on that basket (unless your strategy is to just get this type of user)

Imo, that the protocol is decentralized or not isn’t that relevant.

My mom has no clue the internet or email are quite decentralized, and she still uses them every day. She doesn’t have to care about that. She uses them because the interfaces built on top are useful and make her life easier. That’s what matters.

I don't think that's entirely true. Especially currently in Europe (I know, Europe, hahaha), normies are seeing the issues with centralised social networks, and are looking for alternatives. In The Netherlands (yes, I know, small market, but in the past often a signal for what Europe is going to do) people are currently moving away from WhatsApp to such a degree that Meta has launched a charm offensive. They are moving away, because they see the downside of centralisation. There is momentum building. When they see the casino here, they will move to BlueSky, which is much more normie friendly. Apparently.
I don't mind the crypto angle, and I don't mind the casino, but the extreme focus on American Crypto Twitter users (given the structure of the verification, that's seems to be the target audience of this) will make people want to move away from Farcaster. If that is your goal, that is okay. But I don't see Farcaster growing beyond the currentl CT crowd, then.

> hard lean into degen behavior 

We pay out in USDC. I don’t think that’s a hard lean into degen behavior. :)

i think the way youre approaching this is the only path (focus on the differentiator) but what gives me pause is that as someone who understands crypto well (tens of thousands of txs yearly) the hard lean into degen behavior is still a turnoff

its probably a me thing, but it seems like youre betting on that crypto curious ≈ defi/degen/gambler, and thats the persona every normie/the younger gens will adopt, which also may be true, especially if ai cont to squeeze jobs

I think the problem is that leaning too hard on things like memecoins is alienating. They attract low quality users and if things look like a casino then it also stops wider adoption.

I guess it's just a question of balance.