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Ferran 🐒
@ferran
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). Continue...
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Ferran 🐒
@ferran
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!
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ted (not lasso)
@ted
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
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Ferran 🐒
@ferran
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 Continues...
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Ferran 🐒
@ferran
Then, there is also a real risk in leaning too hard into financial incentives or major partnerships with other type of networks based on financialization (like a wallet app). Sure, they can generate short-term spikes of growth that feel like progress (and i'm pretty sure this could bring a good amount of dopamine in a HQ office). But IMO, these strategies will apeal to a really tiny amount of new users (most of them low quality, interested in easy gains, with a part coming from countries in which 10 USD is what you can earn in a day if you're not fortunate) and they will find a non-interesting (for them) social network after some days, so at the end of the day, this strategy will be a really slow driver of growth long term. Continues...
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Ferran 🐒
@ferran
But the bigger risk is that this could turn into a trap for Merkle. Each spike of growth driven by the current go-to-market approach might reinforce the idea that it’s working “look, there’s growth!” when in reality it’s only deepening on, imo, a not wining GTM and enforcing these growth based on financial incentives. And, over time, that could push the project even further in that direction, making it less accessible and even more niche, rather than building something truly appealing to a broader audience. I don't know if anything of this makes sense to you. It's just a gut feeling.
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