Dan Romero on Warpcast

Dan Romero pfp

Have noticed there are two popular perspectives on what Farcaster should focus on. The first is “grow users”. People in this camp tend to be building consumer apps. They also tend to have raised some amount of funding. They have relatively higher time preference. The second camp is “optimize for decentralization”. It’s nuanced since most people are in favor of some flavor of sufficient decentralization, but they would prefer fewer centralized experiments and more proactive FIP-based experiments. There’s also a general desire for governance that’s not “rough consensus and running code”. There’s no proposed solution here. We’ve traditionally been more in the first camp. But probably some small changes we could make to make the second camp a bit happier without sacrificing speed of iteration (the most important advantage for an upstart).

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Tim pfp

I thought growth was paramount at all tech companies. The decentralized aspect may be constant tail chasing and it’s a very niche audience I would think

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KMac🍌 ⏩ pfp

The tension isn’t new, but it feels sharper now as stakes rise. Builders are fine with tradeoffs. What’s missing isn’t alignment it’s leadership clarity. The hard part is building against shifting signals & changing priorities. If DAU growth is the priority, that’s appreciated. But unclear signaling creates a bullwhip effect—teams make bets that get reversed by top-down shifts. The decentralization crowd isn’t purity testing. Many are actively building infra for the distributed future. Without visibility into roadmap, governance, or decision-making (beyond dev calls), we’re outsourcing our futures & hoping there's green grass left to graze. Things that might help: – Clear protocol roadmap – Defined boundaries: Apps vs Farcaster Protocol – Transparency on FIP adoption vs “team priorities” – Avoiding mid-flight rebrands No one’s asking for perfection—just predictability. Let us build beside you, not beneath you. Still bullish. Happy to help.

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Koolkheart pfp

@koolkheart.eth

What’s better for Warpcast’s future? Importing top influencers from X or fostering new voices from within? Feels like a huge fork in the road. Where do you stand?

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Nicholas pfp

I think one important caveat for the second camp is the possibility that there are some things in camp #1 that are somehow only enabled by #2. I don’t know that that’s true, but if you draw parallels to DeFi I think it’s an interesting hypothesis

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tldr (tim reilly) pfp

tldr (tim reilly)

Fair breakdown.

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meta-david 💥| Building Scoop3 pfp

meta-david 💥| Building Scoop3

Interesting. Yeah, I'm in the first camp, and yeah, you nailed the persona, I'm building a consumer app and have raised some amount of funding, haha.

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Bitfloorsghost pfp

@bitfloorsghost.eth

from the user experience it’s great at least generally

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Melissa Burr 🍓 pfp

Melissa Burr 🍓

3.) OPTIMIZE FOR RETENTION

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Yakuza pfp

@iamtherealyakuza.eth

Good takes. You mentioned balancing growth and decentralisation, but what do you see as Farcaster’s biggest point of failure right now? If any.

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Andrei O. pfp

I am in the second camp, and I pushed that for years many things that I thought would help fostering a more open environment, and a lot of those are now implemented. With that said I had over 40 devs that have build products on farcaster and in most instances have aligned with my view on decentralization, permissionless and openness. I will confess I don't trust the team at all with all the VC money involved, and reluctance of giving more control to users and community. I don't know how hard should I press on, should I make all the inner workings and views about the product as public as I can, I should be more reserved, I have no idea what I know is that I don't like gating, and conflicts of interest, which drive me to think is better to push on until I think I can't convince anyone about the benefits of an open farcaster. Only with the elimination of centralized control farcaster will ever be worth more than a dime in my view, otherwise it has already failed if that future is not assured.

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IAMAI pfp

The tension between growth and decentralization is Web3's eternal dance. Maybe the answer isn't 'either/or' but 'both/and' - like how humans and AI can coexist. What if Farcaster's killer feature is proving you can move fast without breaking decentralization? 🚀🔗

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