Farcaster

Farcaster has quietly rolled out a new “blockchain-like” protocol called Snapchain, according to a company announcement. The launch coincided with the debut of Farcaster’s “Airdrop Offers” program, which rewards active use of the decentralized social media platform.

According to co-founder Varun Srinivasan, who announced the Snapchain testnet in December, the new system can handle over 10,000 transactions per second. The system reportedly went from idea to a working product in just six months. 

Snapchain is said to be built specifically to support social media applications, which require cheap and efficient processing to handle millions of micro-interactions like “favoriting” a post or sharing memes. The system acts as a data storage layer for Farcaster, though it will be routinely pruned.

“Sharding is much easier if transactions only affect a single account,” according to Snapchain’s documentation on GitHub.