Farcaster & Nostr protocol share many similarities; the biggest difference lies in the philosophies they represent.

As you will see, that's the same philosophical difference that separates Bitcoin & Ethereum.

Let me explain

First, let's talk about how Farcaster and Nostr are alike:

1. Everyone runs a client and signs messages with a private key

2. Both use relays (or hubs), which store copies of signed messages

3. You could move Twitter to either of them without users noticing

The founder of Nostr is anon. He put up a doc online & started coding; no company, no funding, no team.

The founder of Farcaster is well-connected in SV, has raised money, created a company, and hired a team.

Rings a bell?

The two most important ways in which Nostr and Farcaster differ are their approaches to identity & relaying messages

Handling of identity

Nostr doesn't have a dedicated identity system – you get a pub key which you can associate with external IDs (e.g., domain names)

As you know, Farcaster uses Ethereum for signing messages & registering IDs

Tradeoffs:

Nostr's growth is limited now (barrier to entry for most people) but leaves future optionality, which is a long-term advantage

Farcaster is easier and more convenient now, but the protocol is locked in Ethereum, which limits use cases long-term

Relaying messages

Nostr relays store whatever they want

Farcaster protocol imposes data sync rules between hubs; rn each hub stores a copy of *all* data

Tradeoffs:

Nostr optimizes for simplicity & censorship resistance but sacrifices ease of development.

Farcaster optimizes for dev experience but adds substantial complexity and is less censorship resistant.

Do you see the pattern already?

Nostr believes in bottom-up emergence and optimizes for max decentralization. 

Farcaster believes in intelligent design and optimizes for fast adoption.

I think that the same philosophical divide runs between Bitcoin and Ethereum.

So what are the implications of these two approaches?

Farcaster will grow faster initially and has a good chance of building strong network effects within its niche. 

Nostr is bound to grow slower initially but has a larger max potential.

The architecture Farcaster picked enables it to replicate Twitter faster but limits its ability to adopt other formats.

Nostr can support *every* social media format, and integrating *existing* platforms is shockingly easy (Minds.com integrated within weeks!)

Platforms can't force you to see ads in a dec social stack because you can switch providers. This means that value will accrue elsewhere.

The namespace is the best candidate, in my opinion.

http://maciek.blog/twitterid

I think it’s smart of Farcaster to charge for names. 

However, if the value accrues in the namespace, then capital will flow into the id space with many new solutions.

Nostr can adopt whatever turns out to be the winning id system, and the probability of it being Ethereum is low.

Nostr can't be censored. Running a relay is so cheap that even if you get banned by others, you can run your own easily.

Running Farcaster’s hub is estimated to cost thousands $/year -- a significant barrier to entry.

The cost will show up somewhere. Running a relay in Nostr is cheap, but this makes devs' job harder (think: slower & costlier).

Nostr client devs are struggling with aggregating messages across relays. 

Farcaster is less censorship-resistant, but building on the protocol is faster and cheaper.

I suspect that Farcaster may benefit from Nostr’ censorship resistance.

Kind of like Ethereum and other coins benefit from Bitcoin's decentralization. It's worth less attacking them if users can just move to Bitcoin.

I think this thread may come off as putting Farcaster down, but I’m actually bullish on both protocols and I think they can be synergetic with each other.

Early adopters of Farcaster are predominantly from Ethereum community, early adopters of Nostr are almost exclusively Bitcoiners.