ccarella

Today's Essay: The Primitives of a Farcaster Application

I have a problem with this. I think there are two layers in Farcaster and we don't have the proper terms to address them. Let me give some examples, not sure how to describe it properly.

Internet apps: Email, Web, FTP, video streaming
Web apps: twitter, Facebook, Amazon, etc.

Of course what you describe are "Farcaster apps". They would be at the "web apps" layer (could even say they run inside "farcaster browsers", like Warpcast, Supercast, etc.)

But "Farcaster apps" are also Warpcast DCs, and Warps, which would be at the "Internet apps" layer. Even channels for now.

How do we make the distinction?

Dad, geek, conversation liquidity provider. vrypan.net (home), /weatherxm (work), @l--o--l (fun). Also https://paragraph.xyz/@purplesubmarine

I often consider casts a farcaster app. (I think Farcaster could have existed, technically, even without casts, which could be something centralized, like DCs, using the protocol for identity, social graph and signers.)

Maybe the layer you describe are "cast apps"? With the exception of DCs, "the combination of Casts, Programmable DMs, Frames, Cast Actions, and Composer Actions" is built on top of casts?

Of course sometimes the distinction is not so clear. And maybe it's only interesting to a handful of fc geeks :-)

At first I called them Farcaster Platform Apps to hint that its more like a Facebook App then an Internet App. Maybe I'm really talking about Warpcast Apps but aspirationally want them to be Farcaster apps.