Farcaster

I often see people Farcaster isn't "sufficiently decentralized".

You're free to define what "sufficiently decentralized" means to you, of course, but how we think about it is laid out in Varun's blog post.

https://www.varunsrinivasan.com/2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks

Put the thread into an essay here:

https://dwr.email/what-does-sufficient-decentralization-mean

So, the answers is.. "ehhh... maybe?" 😀 

Reality is always tougher than imagination. Forecaster is dominated by Warpcast, Warpcast has to follow AppStore's rules, so what started as a censorship resistant protocol (that's the essence of "two users can find each other and communicate" imo), is in practice censored by Apple.

However, Farcaster still has escape hatches. And it's important to preserve them and add more if possible, and not get into a state of mind where we make additional compromises because "it's more efficient/fast/easy and Warpcast already controls this aspect of the ecosystem, anyway".

Your usual argument about network growth holds value here. We have to make sure that when a network size able, to sustain multiple good clients, is reached, and it makes sense for other apps to compete with WC, the protocol allows it, and it has not been compromised in the process.

Dad, geek, conversation liquidity provider. vrypan.net (home), /weatherxm (work), @l--o--l (fun). Also https://paragraph.xyz/@purplesubmarine

I think my argument boils down to: it’s decentralized for developers, but not much incentive to care about Farcaster today since it’s small (the people here are pioneers, different calculus). Grow the pie, people will care.