Stephan
@stephancill
it's OK for farcaster's endgame not to be a highly fair/permissionless/censorship-resistant network of apps but if that is going to be the case then it may as well stop half-assing decentralization and focus on making warpcast the center of everything in crypto and importantly we need to find a different solution to the things that are broken about online social today
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Stephan
@stephancill
inb4 but hubs but product led protocol but client opportunity you can't solve these problems without it being top of mind at *all* times. cutting corners because they are unsexy to consumers is not how this stuff gets fixed
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vrypan |--o--|
@vrypan.eth
I agree in principle. But what is your point of friction exactly?
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Stephan
@stephancill
i would say lack of client diversity but i think the problem is deeper than that in the sense that incentives are not aligned for alternative clients to succeed in the farcaster ecosystem client diversity wouldn't be such a big problem today if warpcast tried to innovate on fair content delivery but their heavy handed approach to spam proves that this is not a priority for them at all warpcast's focus on algorithms and "interesting content" also gives me no reason to believe that they won't end up going down the same path as all the extractive platforms we are all too familiar with today in traditional social. maybe crypto rails gives them an easier way to monetize so that incentives aren't too misaligned with users' in this case but it's hard to say at this stage
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vrypan |--o--|
@vrypan.eth
I see. Ironically, this is one of the problems that (I think) will be solved if user base reaches a certain threshold. I we have 1m active users, there will be a second and a third, VC-funded client that is as good or better than Warpcast, and we will get alternative approaches to content filtering and promotion.
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Stephan
@stephancill
the problem is that for a new client to gain market share they will have to onboard their own users for the most part (warpcast will be good enough for 99% of users that they onboard so no reason to switch) and at that point it's very hard to justify investing that much effort in a protocol that can be argued not to be credibly neutral (seeing as it's owned by your competitor) in other words: without making a conscious effort to align incentives to produce a multi client outcome, i have low confidence that it will happen
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vrypan |--o--|
@vrypan.eth
The way I see it, raising a few million $$$ to create the best client for a network that has a million users and is growing, is totally feasible. What I care about is the core protocol, because, like you mentioned, this is the actual leverage.
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Stephan
@stephancill
oh companies will have no problem raising to build on a protocol with a million users i am just struggling to imagine a world where they manage to make a significant dent in warpcast's market share i also care about the protocol, but like i keep saying: the protocol fails at being more than an open API if there is no client diversity (and that's okay if you go by the standards set by the status quo!)
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