Degen

X vs Farcaster

I created identical threads on two platforms to compare engagement on them. The results blew my mind 🤯

To learn how I *earned $873 in crypto tips, read on and make your own judgement (🛑 NOT financial advice!)

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The thread I created is a HOW-TO for "Second Law", a short movie I made using a hybrid AI workflow.

The goal was to make it appealing to contemporary creators with useful learning content, not just engagement farming.

X on the left, Farcaster on the right

Computational architect. Some structure, mostly chaos. Co-founder {protocell:labs}

https://protocell.xyz/

Some stats for the threads:

X followers: 3567
FC followers: 965

X likes: 20
FC likes: 38 

X reposts: 10
FC reposts: 9

X views: 2250
FC views: 400+

X comments: 2
FC comments: 25

With 3.5x less followers on Farcaster, the thread there got similar engagement in terms of likes and reposts.

Obviously, it was viewed many more times on X (>5x more), but also garnered 10x less (!) comments than on Farcaster (to be fair, most were tipping comments)

Why is engagement on Farcaster so high in comparison to my followers? My guess is the use of channels, which help focus attention to the target audience.

Creators have no control over who sees their posts, and X is incentivized to push posts that drive engagement the most: angry threads, fearmongering, shock, scandal or just good old lust (works every time 🍑🍆)

This is very bad for both the creators and the users of the platform, who feel they are constantly manipulated by the algorithm.

What if users themselves could help boost creators and aid discoverability in an organic way (no algo influence?)

This brings me to one big difference between the two platforms:

$DEGEN tipping 🎩

Without passing judgement on if it actually works (time will tell), it is embraced on the platform far and wide.

How much did I earn in tips for this posting this learning thread?

291,181 $DEGEN (worth $873 on March 5th)

I added up the tips for two related threads, one is the original video, the other one is the HOW-TO thread.

Disclaimer: This was an info thread, NOT financial advice.

I am following the crypto space since 2013 and I've seen it all. $DEGEN is still a speculative asset. Its biggest claim to having utility is to aid discoverability on Farcaster and to reward creators that make quality content so they can continue doing so.

Although all major platforms (X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc.) claim to do the same, Farcaster is trying to achieve this in a decentralized way.

$DEGEN is built on top of the protocol by their users, not by the platform creators (ergo "unofficial" tipping currency status)

This is significant because it means anyone can build their own tipping system (🍖 anyone?)

Concerning $DEGEN, I will not speculate on its future prospects in terms or tokenomics, macro context etc.

I see it as an attempt to integrate principles of web3 into a working social platform. Time will tell if it works.

That being said, I must say that I am spending increasingly more time on Farcaster than on X. My "social" behavior also changed a bit, as in I am more of a degen over here (in a good way I guess)

I am very positive about the openness of the platform and its future, and will stick around to help it grow and evolve 🫡

On X, discoverability is facilitated almost exclusively by the algo (do hashtags even work?) There are NO hashtags on Farcaster, so maybe they are not needed 🤷‍♂️

The issue with using the algorithm to find the target audience for the post is that it comes with huge trade-offs.