POV: there is no influx of people waiting to join Farcaster once it goes permissionless other than airdrop farmers.

1. We use Ethereum, so anyone anti-crypto is won’t be convinced in the near term

2. Existing apps are too similar to Twitter, with way less content

New types of apps / behaviors for growth.

what can ppl get/do here that they can’t anywhere else?

building /cabin, advising /clanker and /farcon | grin.io

As of right now, beyond a differentiated graph, not much beyond a few NFT features. Discove SQL power user stuff is pretty cool. A lot of promise though!

How does Merkle make money in the medium and long term? The names contract pays out to Merkle directly, plus maybe value-adds on top of the proto?

FID and fname contract goes to the protocol, not to Merkle.

We will monetize with subscriptions:

FID and fname contract goes to the protocol, not to Merkle.

We will monetize with subscriptions:
https://warpcast.notion.site/Monetization-2a7eb9291336450988fd62fd246add13

Let's prove that the Farcaster protocol has enough demand to get a place where the protocol can be financially independent. :)

Nice

Will the proto contract Merkle for maintenance? I suppose that’s up to proto governance. Any thoughts on that?

Currently my username shows up as @ekuhn.eth , is that the fname which will cost $10 per year ? Where do I see the FID now? Or is this yet to be completed? 

What is the thinking around ENS names as an equivalent identifier? Could link your FID in ENS record