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David Furlong pfp

The Farcaster protocol does very little today in the way of solving conflicts or UX problems around multiple competing clients; which, one might expect, is the hard & important thing to solve in a social protocol. Farcaster is being controlled & governed by the 99% client (Warpcast), repeatedly making choices that limit the ability of alternate clients to build and compete (See SIWF, Messaging, Channels). As a builder, it's unclear why Farcaster is not any different from early Twitter, which was open, had alt clients, but one overwhelmingly dominant client. Once Twitter became big enough, it shifted from attracting to extracting, and shut down their API, becoming the Twitter of today, ruled by a benevolent dictator. Is Farcaster/Warpcast just running back the Twitter playbook? Why should we users and builders trust Warpcast's continued benevolence, when their short term choices are already showing a willingness to compromise on the Protocol part in the name of monoclient growth?

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It’s a valid point. MM controls the whole network because they control both the dominant client and the code the hubs run. If the FIP process was less centralized, would it hit your need? The SV adage of “move fast and break things” seems incompatible with the the added time for bottom-up consensus, but perhaps it would ensure the long-term health of the network.

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David Furlong pfp

I don‘t think formal governance is productive at this stage, provided the ecosystem building on the protocol is treated somewhat equally (in opportunity, not outcomes). This is not the case.

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