Base

🚀 When Farcaster Airdrop? If you're waiting for a Farcaster airdrop, I'm sorry to say it might never come. Did you know that building applications on Farcaster, like frames, can make it sustainable without a token? Let me explain in this thread.

💡Bitso R&D Principal Engineer,🏅POAP Contributor. Badger.town early fan.

🛠️ Although you can create frames easily, most of them require user verification, and this can only be achieved by consuming the API of a node or Hub: Hubble is the most popular implementation.

🔄 By deploying your own hub or paying others to use theirs, you're making it possible for your application to function, but you're also providing service to the entire network, enabling it to scale.

📈 Of course, it will always be necessary for Farcaster to have its own nodes, but this dynamic allows Farcaster to have a scaling vector and sustainable incentives in relation to the number of users using the platform.

🌐 Applications that are not frames also need nodes. Authentication services with Farcaster, dashboard services similar to Dune, or others also require hubs.

🌱Unlike Bitcoin, where not only having a node is required but also ensuring security, in Farcaster, security is guaranteed without the need for PoW or PoS mining. This detail is what makes Farcaster sustainable with mechanisms different from cryptocurrency networks.

💡 If you want to read more thoughts, follow me for additional content.

💼 Hubs usually don't have their API open, so the most common way to access one is by deploying it yourself or paying others for its use: services like Neynar. It's possible that Alchemy and other infrastructure providers will enter this business.