I was curious about Farcaster retention, so I dug into the monthly cohort retention data. After a year of growing pains, I think the metrics are looking healthy!

A quick thread 🧵

So one thing about this chart, we need to ignore this most recent month because March isn't done. All those very red numbers along the diagonal will get less red over time - just ignore them

eng @megaphone-hq | prev @0xproject | Interested in walkable cities

The first thing that jumps out is a wave of diagonal green! This corresponds to February 2024 - which I believe was the launch of frames v1. The hype was real, and it brought back a lot of users! 

The retention after frames v1 was also solid

But then we also see a weird red spot in mid 2024. The February, March, April 2024 cohort of users dropped off significantly by October 2024. 

Retention metrics had never been this bad 😬

There was a large influx of signups from February through June of 2024. I believe this was too much too fast. Anecdotally, Farcaster felt spammy, low quality and unusable. New users didn't know the culture - this place felt like Lens for gods sake

This was a major reason I personally stopped using FC in 2024.

The latest cohorts since August feel a little healthier. We won't be able to measure their 6 month retention for a few more months from now, but the signs are encouraging, esp vs the Feb - May cohorts

Retention cohort analysis is a backwards looking metric that tells you if you had PMF, but it takes months to give you a clear picture. 

One metric that is still backwards looking but requires a shorter lookback window is DAU/MAU - and this has reached numbers not seen since June of 2024! And look at that slope!!

Looking into FC resurrected users (active after a 90+ day inactivity period) and we are indeed seeing good numbers!

Biggest recent days:
- Feb 28 and Mar 1 (EthDenver?)
- Feb 22-24
- Mar 6 

But overall, the trend is looking fairly strong - welcome back! 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟

I think something is brewing - frames v2, the warplet, and a further maturing social layer are turning FC into its own hardy AF subculture

I'm not yet ready to predict take off, but damn, doesn't it feel like there's something in the air? See my post on resurrected users:

I think something is brewing - frames v2, the warplet, and a further maturing social layer are turning FC into its own hardy AF subculture

I'm not yet ready to predict take off, but damn, doesn't it feel like there's something in the air? See my post on resurrected users: https://warpcast.com/philipliao.eth/0x95a12a36

Ok, here are links to my data - please check my work, it might all be BS lmao, I'm not a data scientist by trade, just an LLM augmented bit flipper

- Dune dashboard: https://dune.com/philipliao/farcaster-retention
- Google Spreadsheet (where I copy pasted the cohort table to get nice colors):

Ok, here are links to my data - please check my work, it might all be BS lmao, I'm not a data scientist by trade, just an LLM augmented bit flipper

- Dune dashboard: https://dune.com/philipliao/farcaster-retention
- Google Spreadsheet (where I copy pasted the cohort table to get nice colors): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S2APvki0v9npZ2oTDh2oSsbqRyMT9FJQEpRxtt1QuGw/edit?usp=sharing