Farcaster

1/2 My forecast for 2025 is that the integration of Farcaster’s social layer in Coinbase Wallet will be a spectacular failure.

We'll probably see a spike when it comes out of beta (after all, there’s a segment of Coinbase Wallet users who enjoy trying out new things and if they do it well people will try it out) but I predict that by the end of summer, no more than 5% of messages will come from there, and DAUs via Coinbase will be negligible.

The reasons? Current Farcaster status quo simply isn’t appealing outside an extremely narrow niche. People don’t want a social layer tied to their wallets. And 99% of people don't give a fuck about financial incentives (basing a significant part of your growth strategy on that is shooting yourself in the foot. It’s a massive trap that could be very difficult to escape from).

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

2/2 

By the end of the year, this will likely force a major pivot in Farcaster go-to-market strategy toward something far more sexy than what’s been shown so far (which, tbh, has been one of the least exciting GtMs I’ve seen in a long time for a project with this much potential).

Hopefully, that pivot will finally position it as a protocol that feels useful to a broader audience, and we’ll start to see more mainstream growth and regular developers and communities will find utility in Farcaster.

This is just a positive criticism, I want FC success, and I'm looking forward to proving myself wrong!

helping build farcaster | surfing @ venice, ca | eating @ gjusta / gjelina | “lucky me, lucky mud”

thx for welcoming the message well @ted, even if it might be a bit bitter.

I'll try to put together some thoughts. First, I want to make clear that I truly believe Farcaster has the best foundations of a social layer (that's why I'm here, and I built on it). And just the fact that you put together such a big network of nerds and mavericks and gave them a sandbox for experimentation is already an incredible gift

But I also think that the current trajectory is heavily biased towards a US-centric worldview. And imo, that has some positive things but also some strategic limitations

For example, the fact that your instinct was to suggest me to make a bet on a prediction market (which I, personally, love ngl ahaha) already shows the lens through which many of us approach things. And that lens excludes the 99% majority of people who don't give a fuck about financial bets or putting money in the middle of every aspect of our lives

And that moves FC towards a tiny market, not appealing to many people

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interesting, thanks for sharing. you should turn this into a bet or a prediction market :)

what would you have the value proposition be if you were in charge?

fwiw i think chris dixon's read, write, own framing of protocols is one of the most inspiring, and something that resonates with mainstream users

musician: gigameshmusic.com | dev: github.com/gigamesh

I’m really interested to see what this will mean when they execute it. Do you know if they expanded on this more during FarCon?

Because if it's just "fArCaStEr iS ThE OnLy nEtWoRk In wHiCh aRtIsTs cAn eArN" and then a lot of focus on NFTs and this type of stuff... I'll be quite disappointed.

I agree with some of that, but focusing on creators is already on their roadmap. IMO that is the “sexy” pivot.

Thanks for writing it up. I can't speak to whether it'll succeed or fail but I think it's a "must try" as an experiment. Part of the entire premise here is whether a social network (architected in this manner) can be infrastructure leveraged by other products. Maybe a wallet is the wrong type of product to integrate a social feed? But wallets do have a DAU challenge and this is certainly a better idea than a wallet trying to build its own proprietary content feed.