Data

Building /bright-moments - minting onchain art IRL | /purple #15 | FID 129 #magikarp

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Lately, I've heard ppl saying that a lot of high-quality users are joining Farcaster. So I decided to check the data, and here's what I found:

- Since Aug 01, FC has gained 20k new users
- 9k casted at least once
- 5k casted 1-10 times 
- 550 casted 100+ times
- 160 casted more than 370 times
 
The data (which I got via @neynar) shows that over 50% of the new users have never made a cast. For context, the average OG user, such as @phil, makes about 369 casts per month (root + replies).

50% conversion from signup to cast. nice!

The observation is not positive. The other 50% who did cast are not high-quality users, not even close

If you spend all your time on Warpcast, everything looks great, just like @vitalik.eth recently said. But if you follow @balajis.eth's suggestion and analyze the protocol data, you'll see a different picture, one where the protocol is dominated by very low-quality users and casts.

I'm sure @dwr.eth and the team are aware of this issue and have plans to address it, but I can’t speak on the specifics. I also haven’t seen any public information about what the team is doing to tackle it, though maybe I’m just not listening well enough :)

I totally agree! The open graph is one of the biggest reasons why I stick around. But it feels like Farcaster is starting to develop a culture where if you dig into the raw data and point out that things aren't looking great, people try to silence you. It’s like everything here has to be "permanently optimistic" by default, which isn't a good look

I don’t think I ever said the data is low quality. I am just glad you can write a script to analyze the protocol data directly on Farcaster. That alone in a sense means it is not low quality — because it is visible.

What do you think about using ZK attestations as a solution? With just a click, you can filter the entire network based on all kinds of attestations. Isn’t that a better approach than relying on ML models to clean things up?

Oh I've always been assuming that in equilibrium like 99% of raw protocol data will be adversarial AI slop. The whole game is in figuring out how to raise the good stuff to the top.

I like this question. I dont know how much MM thought about it early on. The storage fee was supposed to be a solution for spam, but I think that was more for PR than anything else. The answer might involve zk attestations. With the click of a button you should be able to filter the network however you desire. This would make Farcaster the ultimate playground, but Warpcast seems to have tunnel vision on that home feed algorithm. Ive always said this: if the infrastructure is good enough, then we would see an explosion of new applications beeing build on Farcaster. Yes you do need more users, that's always a good thing, but we've had an incedible tribe on here from time. The issue is more infrastructure related imo and the way Warpcast completely dominates the protocol.

> one where the protocol is dominated by very low-quality users and casts

do you think there will ever be a social app or network where this is not the case? feels like it’s a default rule of the internet, eg email, or websites in general

personally i would not care if the protocol is mostly low-Q users, more relevant is gross number of Q users.