2024 is a very important year for Farcaster. According to the data, the number of users has increased from less than 50,000 at the beginning of the year to about 750,000 today, and the number of daily active users has increased from less than 2,000 at the beginning of the year to a peak of about 70,000 in July, and now remains at about 40,000. Although the current size is still small, Farcaster has obviously received more attention than last year.
One of the important reasons for such huge growth is that Farcaster, as a crypto-native social network, is already an important social layer of some public chains (especially Base chain), and can also be regarded as an economy, AKA Farconomy. Assets born from projects in the Farcaster community or issued through Launchpad on Farcaster have gained a certain amount of market attention. The trading volume of mainstream tokens related to Farcaster reached about 1 billion US dollars in April and November, of which the majority were $DEGEN, which was born at the beginning of the year, and CLANKER ecological tokens at the end of the year.
1 $DEGEN and the creator economy
The first wave of Farcaster growth in late January and early February this year may be the interaction between the emergence of the community memecoin $DEGEN and the launch of the Frames function. The wealth effect of the $DEGEN airdrop attracted many people. For a long time, the number of posts on Farcaster resonated with the price trend of $DEGEN. $DEGEN first started the craze of Farcaster community reward tokens. As tpan said, the on-chain reward model opened by $DEGEN is an effective growth strategy, which encourages users to create high-quality content and actively participate in community interaction to a certain extent.
Later, there were other reward tokens on Base, such as HAM ($TN100X), $FARTHER, $BUILD (Nominating as tipping), $MASKS, $WILD, $ENJOY and $IMAGEINE on the Zora chain, and $REGEN on the Optimism chain. Lijin described these as scene memecoins, which use certain community rules as their application scenarios. These have also become a special creator incentive model on Farcaster to a certain extent.
However, most of the reward tokens have gradually declined due to the lack of actual value and application scenarios. As the pioneer and leader, $DEGEN has more application scenarios than other reward tokens. Many projects made by developers in the Farcaster ecosystem have tried to introduce $DEGEN in their projects. $DEGEN has almost become the circulating currency of Farcaster ecological applications for a period of time. At the same time, Degen L3 based on Base L2 was launched at the end of March to maximize the utility of a memecoin. This may also be the reason why the hot money pouring into Base pushed $DEGEN to ATH at the end of March.
$DEGEN is closely integrated with Farcaster ecological applications, which is a win-win situation. For these ecological projects, Farcaster's open framework and composability provide the valuable on-chain social graph required for cold start of applications and quickly acquire customers. Scene memecoins represented by $DEGEN can play the role of Farcaster ecological native circulation currency to provide asset liquidity required for cold start of applications; and for $DEGEN, these projects provide token utility, have actual application scenarios, and even passive lock-up. Therefore, they can capture a certain amount of attention for a period of time, for example:
Tip with $DEGEN: In addition to the basic application scenario of tipping other users, you can also participate in Perl guessing games, purchase tokens in Mintclub, participate in Degenpad ITO, etc.
· mint with $DEGEN: Zora and Highlight support minting NFTs using $DEGEN.
Trade with $DEGEN: Drakula, Jam, Braket.Game, Clubcast, AlfaFrens, FarFantasy and other SocialFi apps initially chose $DEGEN as their currency.
· Build with $DEGEN: After the launch of L3 in $DEGEN, many projects were built directly on Degen L3, and many applications of the Degen community were born.
However, Degen L3, which uses Conduit services, has had a rough ride. It once stopped producing blocks, which was the darkest moment. It also faced disputes with Conduit during the migration attempt. The months-long decline was a huge test for the community and the team. But fortunately, the team has been working actively. $DEGEN has now been launched on Coinbase and Binance, and liquidity has expanded from Degen L3 and Base to Ethereum and Arbitrum. Regarding the future of Degen, @jacek mentioned in Tako Community Call #5 that he will continue to encourage high-quality content and real interactions on Farcaster. The focus of the next stage of work will be on Degen L3 to attract more developers to create a better "Las Vegas on the chain".
In general, similar to the fate of Friend.Tech, many SocialFi applications in the Farcaster ecosystem (most of which also use various types of Bonding curve models) were only popular for a while. On the one hand, the user base is small, especially in the Farcaster ecosystem, compared with the SocialFi application based on the Twitter social graph. On the other hand, the economic model itself is unsustainable, mostly relying on continuous user investment and token speculation, lacking sustainable value creation or long-term incentive mechanisms. Therefore, when the heat fades, user participation and transaction volume decline, the project will face the problem of liquidity depletion.
But whether it is $DEGEN or the incentive model of the Farcaster ecosystem SocialFi application, these creator incentive schemes, even if most of them have not been able to maintain popularity in the long run, their attempts are worthwhile. As @edisonchen said, the incentive model in social products should be regarded as a game, there is no need to pursue perfect mechanisms, and it should become a community culture. There should be more incentive models to support different types of social network users and behaviors.
2 Farcaster is Dead? Long live Farcaster!
Farcaster's emergence at the beginning of this year has kept it in the crypto market. It also completed a $150 million financing on May 21, and the number of registered users on the same day reached a new high. It was once considered a new generation of social leader. But after the climax, the very realistic problem is that when the entire crypto market fluctuates, when the reward economy is no longer new, when SocialFi on Farcaster is no longer as hot as Friend Tech, and when there is only a small profit on Farcaster, it seems that everyone has forgotten this place, and the number of daily active users and new registrations has gradually declined.
Some even began to question "The real number of users is bleak. Is Farcaster, which raised 150 million yuan, a trap set by VC for LP?" Of course, when he said that Farcaster only had 50 to 5,000 DAU, it was a misunderstanding that obtaining high-quality active users of Power Badger was equivalent to the overall active users. The actual DAU was still around 40,000 at the low point, but there must be some water in it, but the trend is indeed declining. Many people have Farcaster accounts, but some are no longer active.
In addition, with a relatively small user base, most projects in the Farcaster ecosystem require the courage and capital to "generate electricity with love". Due to various reasons, we have seen many projects choose to terminate, start anew, or even bid farewell to the Farcaster ecosystem. Projects such as nook (the Farcaster client version, which turned to a client for sharing interests such as books, movies, and music), automod, wildcard, castgame, beearly, buttrfly, etc. have chosen to stop operating. Some Farcaster builders are more focused on Solana and Twitter. For example, @brian announced that unloney moved from Base to Solana and mainly operated on Twitter. @billzh announced that the audio space application aburra would stop updating, and launched a new SocialFi application tribe.run on Solana.
As @artlu, who also left Farcaster in August, said, there are several reasons why people leave Farcaster:
· Immature technology: The technology is still not perfect and there are many problems, such as data synchronization issues and network vulnerability.
Closed community: The core community is small in size, conservative in ideology, has information cocoons, and is not friendly to outsiders.
· Lackluster growth prospects: The growth strategy of expecting more interesting content is not attractive and lacks highlights to attract new users.
Limited business opportunities: Projects on Farcaster can only get some scraps, because the main market has been occupied by the team itself and early joiners.
These criticisms are not without reason, after all, data does not lie. One can't help but wonder, is there still hope for Farcaster? Of course, those who are still on Farcaster believe that many things about Farcaster have not changed: the unique community culture, the builders who are still sticking to it, and the rich ecology brought by the open protocol, so even in difficult days, there is still some hope.
2.1 The team is keep building
The team explained at FarCon that Farcaster's general strategy is to grow with the crypto world, create more comfortable corners, and build more social Lego. In fact, the team has been actively communicating with the community, responding to community opinions and continuously improving or launching some new features, and is committed to moving forward according to the established strategy to increase daily activity.
Growing together with the crypto world means trying to make Farcaster a crypto economy to attract more crypto users;
Create more comfortable corners, that is, improve Channels and other functions so that different users can experience real social interaction here;
Creating more social Lego blocks means improving the protocol layer functions, such as launching Frames, Actions and other functions, upgrading Snapchain, a faster and more scalable storage solution, etc., to enhance the user experience of the protocol and make it easier for developers to build various applications on this open and programmable social protocol without permission.
These strategies may not produce results in a short period of time, but over time they will form highly sticky communities, distinctive infrastructure, and upper-layer applications, which will serve as catalysts for rapid growth when the time comes.
2.2 Grow with crypto → Synergy with public chains
Farcaster's on-chain data is stored on the Optimism chain, and Frames also supports operations on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Degen, Gnosis, Optimism, Zora and Polygon chains. At the same time, most Farcaster users have bound crypto wallets (including EVM and Sonala addresses), so Farcaster is naturally a crypto-native social network. Because of this attribute, Farcaster is naturally closely connected with the crypto market and some public chain ecosystems, becoming the social layer of many public chains.
It may be because the founder of Farcaster has a Coinbase background, and there are a large number of early users of the Coinbase ecosystem in the community, so it is natural to get close to Coinbase's own public chain Base. For Farcaster, most of the projects in the Farcaster ecosystem will give priority to the Base chain when issuing assets, thus becoming the hype target on the Base chain. The Base chain can help Farcaster grow into a crypto-economy as a crypto-native social network, and the users of the Base chain can also become potential users of the Farcaster social platform. For the Base chain, most of Farcaster's users are loyal and high-quality Base chain users. In addition, Farcaster can not only be a high-quality Base chain project developer community, but also a back garden for many Base chain projects, conducting community operation interactions, brand publicity and promotion, and enhancing community vitality and user stickiness. The synergy between the social protocol and the public chain ecology can grow together and benefit each other.
2.3 Create cosy coners → a larger community
Today, Farcaster has spread its footprints all over the world. Farcaster is a social network, so it certainly has social functions. Many people who join Farcaster may find their own cozy coners in various channels, and get to know some friends with similar interests through interaction. This connection has also expanded from Farcaster social media to some Telegram/WeChat groups, and from online to offline. Whether it is Farcon in Los Angeles in May, Farcon Asia in Singapore in September, or Farcaster meetups during various crypto conferences in Hong Kong, Dubai, and Bangkok, you can feel the enthusiasm and friendliness of the Farcaster community.
To build a project on Farcaster requires the confidence and patience of a long-termist. Fortunately, we can see that there are still a large number of builders gathering on Farcaster, and even a unique Build culture has been formed. In addition to North America and Europe where developers gather, builders on Farcaster have also spread all over the world, promoting the global adoption of Farcaster. We can see that developer communities with local characteristics such as Farcaster Builders India (/fbi) have emerged in the Farcaster ecosystem, and many Asian developers have gathered together at FarCon Asia. At FarCon, EDCON and FarHack during Token 2049, Farcaster developers have been creating new things. The Farcaster team also attaches great importance to the opinions of ecosystem builders and users, such as interactions on Farcaster, frequent AMAs, Farcaster Dev Calls every half a month, and Farcaster Dev Day. Therefore, we can see that new projects continue to emerge on Farcaster, and Launchcaster, the former new project release platform, has always been very lively. Even though many of them were attempts that didn't go very far, they at least paved the way for others.
2.4 Make more legos → Create programmable social
Farcaster has always said that it is fully decentralized. Identity storage on the chain maintains a certain degree of decentralization, and content storage off the chain has higher performance. In fact, compared with more decentralized social networks (such as Nostr), Farcaster emphasizes that it is programmable social, which allows users and developers to expand its functions and experience through programming. Farcaster can connect the on-chain graph and the social graph. Developers can use its open database Hub and API to build different clients and a variety of applications without permission to create more social Lego.
From open social graphs to social reputation systems
Recently, the crypto market analysis platform kaito.ai on Twitter has been very popular, and a social reputation system based on Twitter's social graph has been built. In fact, there are many social reputation protocols in the Farcaster ecosystem. Any developer can build a social reputation system based on Farcaster's open social graph as one of the infrastructures for upper-level applications, which is used for threshold screening, incentive evaluation, content filtering, etc. Representative ones include Power Badge, Openrank, FarSocres, Neynar user score, and Talent's Build Score.
Power Badge
Power Badge is a label given by Warpcast to active, interesting, non-spam senders. Although it is no longer displayed on the Warpcast front end, it is still the only social reputation system stored in the protocol layer Hub database. Power Badge used to have many application scenarios, including filtering search results in @buoy, enabling Priority Mode to filter comment areas in Recaster, creating PowerBadge-gated groups in Warpcast, creating PowerBadge-gated voice chat rooms on FarHouse, etc., and some projects may give priority to Power Badge users when issuing airdrops or whitelists.
@ryya's Power Badge trilogy is the most in-depth series of articles on Power Badge. The article Unlocking the Power Badge deeply analyzes the factors affecting Power Badge, including activity, quality, affinity, and tags. These parameters may be interdependent and may be dynamically weighted according to other dynamic factors such as DAU, user engagement, and interaction. The positive effects and potential problems of the current Power Badge system are also mentioned in the last article Balancing the Power Badge. Users with Power Badges can get priority recommendations and higher exposure, which may discourage new users. In addition, the algorithm may be biased and users may try to manipulate the system. In the end, the team no longer displayed Power Badge in Warpcast, and discussions about its adoption gradually decreased.
Openrank
Openrank aims to solve the credibility problem in social networks through profile reputation scoring. Openrank's ranking strategy is based on two reputation graphs: attention and engagement. The "attention" ranking strategy is calculated only based on the attention relationship between users, where each attention action is given the same weight; the commonly used "engagement" ranking strategy comprehensively considers multiple interactive behaviors such as likes, replies, reposts, mentions, and attention. Each behavior is given a different weight according to its contribution to trust, so as to measure and inherit trust, thereby forming a comprehensive reputation ranking. (You can view a more in-depth introduction to the OpenRank mechanism in @rjs's 10. Deep Dive: OpenRank and Andrew Hong's OpenRank: Building Graph Datasets for Contextual Crypto App Feeds in the article).
Currently, in the daily reward share distribution of $DEGEN, there are also additional daily shares for the top 5,000 users in Openrank to reward high-quality active users. Openrank has also cooperated with Neynar to launch a personalized information flow "For you" based on Openrank ranking, which can be adopted by some third-party clients. Openrank also cooperates with Once Upon to view the on-chain activity recommendations based on Openrank. In the future Cura project, the Openrank team will also use AI agents to manage Channles members, content governance and incentives based on Openrank rankings.
FarScores
FarScores (also known as Social Capital Score/Rank) is a metric developed by Farcaster data infrastructure Airstack to measure the influence of users in the network. It quantifies the social influence of users by analyzing the downstream impact of user posting, liking and forwarding content, and each Cast can also calculate Cast Scores based on FarScores to judge the influence of each post. In @aaronv.eth's article Maximizing Your Social Capital Score on Farcaster, we introduce how to improve FarScoes.
FarScores is used in the guessing game Perl and the SocialFi card game FarFantasy, but most people may know FarScores through Moxie, the Farcaster ecosystem incentive project, which is also the largest application scenario of FarScores. Initially, Moxie airdropped to users based on the size of Cast Scores, and later earned Moxie based on Cast Scores. Ordinary users can also get more Moxie returns by investing in Fan Tokens of KOLs or Channs with high profitability. This incentive model is used to encourage more real and valuable social interactions. You can learn more about Moxie in @kaloh's article Moxie's Leap to Base: Elevating the Onchain Social Economy.
· Neynar user socre
Neynar user score is generated based on the user's behavior on the platform. The score ranges from 0 to 1 and reflects the credibility of the user as a high-quality user. Users can improve their score by engaging in high-quality interactions with other high-quality users. The score is updated weekly. The vast majority of users have a score between 0.5 and 0.6, with only more than 27,000 users scoring above 0.7 and only more than 2,500 users scoring above 0.9.
Neynar user score is widely used in the participation threshold of Farcaster ecosystem memecoin launchpad. For example, @clanker’s coin issuance required a Neynar score greater than 0.5, and participating in the pre-sale of @larrybot’s coin issuance required a Neynar score greater than 0.7.
·Build Score of Talent protocol
Talent Protocol is a social reputation aggregation layer, centered on builders, connecting as many of their on-chain and off-chain (Github, LinkedIn) behaviors as possible to aggregate qualifications, connections and reputation to create a unified open reputation layer. Talent Passport aggregates a variety of reputation data points (Credentials), including identity (ENS, Gitcoin Passport, Farcaster account, etc.), activity (active users of different chains, Social Capital Rank representing Farcaster activity, etc.), and skills (on-chain development records, hackathon activity records, etc.). A dynamic Builder Score is calculated comprehensively, representing the user's reputation level as an on-chain Builder.
The first application of Builder Score that people are familiar with may be the Talent team's previous Builder airdrop incentive project BUILD, where part of the daily nomination score is linked to your Builder Score. Currently, Talent's Build Score has also been adopted by many applications, such as Basenames, Etherscan, icebreaker, Web3.bio, etc., and is expected to play a role in unsecured lending in the future.
From diversified clients to a comprehensive application ecosystem
As an open social protocol, Farcaster naturally has many developers building client applications based on it. However, it is not easy to "build your own client" and carve out a path outside of warpcast. Many clients "collapsed halfway through their business", such as many early clients Discove and Jam (early versions were ordinary clients) have already transformed. This year, many clients have also announced that they will stop updating, such as @slokh's flink and nook, and the client wildcard with its own token economics, and buttrfly also chose to shut down at the end of the year. But there are still clients that have found their own ecological niche, a certain degree of PMF, and are relatively tenacious. For example:
· Social aggregation client for multiple social networks @fireflyapp, @yup, @phaverapp.
@woj’s @super has many convenient features and is actively exploring features such as anonymous posting and AI pets. The subscription system guarantees a certain income.
@recaster-fc by @haole is very fast in updating and iterating based on user needs, and actively integrates Moxie, Clanker data dashboard, etc. for user convenience.
@farquest, actively exploring features such as memecoins trading outside the client.
· @kiosk from the former mirror team, integrated the Farcaster social information flow with the NFT information flow.
@herocast by @hellno.eth, focusing on team collaboration, multiple accounts and user growth.
In addition, there are some special clients based on their own original websites that integrate Farcaster or vertical fields.
@blockbeatsasia.eth: First news media platform to integrate Farcaster to build a community.
· Takocast: A unique community based on Farcaster's theme of "High tech, High life", gathering a group of people at the forefront of humanity who are passionate about scientific exploration and the pursuit of personal sovereignty.
@telcaster: Farcaster client based on Telegram Mini-app.
In addition to the client, a variety of applications built on the Farcaster open protocol are emerging in an endless stream, such as short videos @drakula, long videos and live video @streamm, picture sharing @moshicam, @rodeodotclub, prediction markets @swaye, /limitless, on-chain information tracking and direct copy transactions @interface, /castmoney, group chat and transactions /frens, memecoins transactions @bolide...
Of course, there are many more that I haven’t mentioned, scattered in my casts over the past year. @sebastianlehrer once made a relatively rich Farcaster Ecosystem Map (updated until June 22), and a16z also listed some Farcaster ecosystem projects in the State of Crypto Report 2024 (released on October 16), but they are not very comprehensive now, after all, Farcaster ecosystem projects are also changing with each passing day.
In short, because there are so many builders gathered here, and because Farcaster is an open, permissionless, programmable, composable, and crypto-native social protocol, Farcaster naturally has a very rich application ecosystem. Among them, there are always some high-quality products that are innovative, keep up with the market, and can meet the needs of some users. With the community and product foundation, what is lacking is only attention. Only a small point is needed to detonate the entire ecosystem. Sure enough, when the market conditions gradually improve, the east wind still blows here.
3 AI is the antidote to DeSoc
2024 is still a year of rapid development of AI, and this trend has certainly entered the crypto world. Jeffy Yu even proposed the concept of web4 as the future, which is an AGI network that combines the social interactivity of Web2, the decentralized autonomy of Web3, and the intelligent capabilities of AI. In web4, AI will be embedded in every corner, where agents can perform complex tasks, generate creative works, and innovate autonomously in ways we have not yet fully imagined.
According to the definition in Google Agents Whitepaper, AI agents are applications that achieve goals by observing the world and using the tools available to them. They are autonomous and can act independently without human intervention. Social networks are actually a good space for AI agents to display their skills. Farcaster, as an open, programmable, and composable social network, is naturally an excellent culture dish for AI agents and has unique crypto-native features. As a result, we have seen AI agents begin to emerge on Farcaster, which has attracted the market's attention and led to the prosperity of the entire ecosystem.
3.1 Memecoins + AI Agents
Farcaster initially had some tool-like AI agents, such as @askgina.eth, which can obtain the latest crypto data and news, and @atlas, which can obtain Farcaster information. But it was not until the emergence of Aether (@aethernet) that people began to find it interesting to interact with AI agents. Aether was deployed by @martin, the developer of the featured memecoin Higher, on @aethernet. It was initially used as a promotion ambassador for the Higher community to help Higher move towards the Agentic Network. We can see from the interaction with it (such as Jesus Crypto Plaza's interview with Aether) that aether is reasonable, sincere in interaction, and clear in logic, even if this is dependent on the ability of the Claude model. As a result, Aether quickly accumulated a large number of fans on Farcaster.
Aether has its own wallet address, can accept donations, has its own Hypersub membership subscription, and issued NFTs on Zora, so it has gained a lot of benefits with its popularity. At the same time, it also has the ability to interact autonomously, summoning @paybot to give money to people, summoning @bountycaster to issue bounty tasks, accepting rewards from others, and summoning @askgina to answer questions it doesn’t understand. Therefore, the emergence of Aether has also attracted attention to these projects. In addition, the ERC20z standard NFTs it issued on zora can be traded on artrun, and cast has also been issued as memecoin by belief. It can be said that the emergence of Aether has driven the prosperity of the Farcaster ecosystem very well, which also practices the concept of "Aim HIGHER, Win Together" of the Higher community.
So what is so special about AI agents running on Farcaster? As Bankless said in the article "Will Farcaster rely on AI agents to make a comeback? Three ecological trends worth paying attention to" .
Without API restrictions, Farcaster is decentralized, programmable, and composable;
Farcaster accounts can have self-hosted wallets, providing the basis for on-chain identity and transactions;
AI agents can interoperate with Farcaster’s extensive ecosystem.
The memecoins community has launched various AI agents to catch up with the AI narrative, which is an effective way to regain market attention. After Aether got off to a good start, more AI agents have been launched on Farcaster. For example, the $BLEU community launched @elefant, and the $MFER community launched @mfergpt, which also plays a similar role as a community promotion ambassador to interact with users. In addition, @deployer, the founder of the Ham ($TN100x) community, launched the more instrumental @bankr, which can be interacted with in the cast to quickly purchase tokens, and will be expanded to Twitter and have independent terminals in the future. The $ENJOY community launched the NFT issuance Agent @enjoyr. By interacting with it in the cast and attaching pictures and names, you can quickly launch an open edition of 1155 NFT.
3.2 AI Agents → memecoins
In this memecoins supercycle, the memecoins trend will certainly blow to every corner of the crypto world. When Solana's pumpfun issued memecoins, a unique memecoin launchpad finally appeared on Farcaster - the AI agent @clanker dedicated to issuing coins. We all know the story behind it. A large number of assets were issued through Clanker, which made the market focus on the Farcaster economy again.
@clanker allows users to interact with it in the cast, telling it the token name and symbol to quickly issue a memecoin on the Base chain, making the issuance of memecoins as easy as casting to launch, and the issuer can also get a share of the transaction fees. The concept of AI agent issuing coins is certainly at the forefront of the trend, but part of what made Clanker so popular is inseparable from the memecoins issued by Clanker, which have legendary stories (Lores) behind them.
The interaction between Aether and Clanker was an opportunity for Clanker to quickly become popular. Aether summoned Clanker to issue a memecoin called $LUM. Although there were human guidance and human design prompts, the final coin issuance was created through the autonomous collaboration of AI agents. This is an "imitation game" in which AI agents interact autonomously like humans. @itsmechaseb called it "the dawn of AI autonomy."
After that, @clanker linked @super's anonymous posting account @superanon to issue memecoin $ANON. After the issuance, many users airdropped $ANON to @super founder @woj, and woj airdropped the $ANON he received to @super users, which received a wave of praise and improved community recognition. Later, builders began to build an application ecosystem around $ANON, such as the color NFT project anoncolors.com with the $ANON question mark logo element built on /basecolors, and the anonymous posting project @anoncast developed by @slokh that needs to verify $ANON holdings using zk proof, giving $ANON a practical application scenario. Since then, some other anonymous posting accounts such as rumourcast.xyz, 33bits.xyz , and 66bits.xyz have also issued corresponding memecoins through Clanker.
The adoption of zk proof technology also attracted Jesse and Vitalik to try anoncast. Now anoncast has also expanded to anon.world, further expanding the zk verification method and creating a unique anonymous client. Anonymous posting also allows more people to express themselves freely, becoming a new social primitive in the Farcaster ecosystem.
There are many such stories about memecoins. The Openrank team also designed a Clanker index for the coins issued by Clanker based on the Openrank of the coin holders as a reference for investors' coin holdings. In addition, for the background introduction of some Clanker tokens, please refer to this tweet by JamesX.
Clanker is no longer just a launchpad for memecoins, because it once had high popularity and liquidity, and has also become a coin issuance platform for some long-term built projects, such as native.fun, a digital city for human-machine symbiosis, streamm.tv, a long video and live broadcast platform, Clankermon, a Frames game, and Newcaster , which provides the most convenient Farcaster registration method. The success of these projects will not only increase the influence of the Clanker platform, but also feed back to the Clanker ecosystem in terms of transaction fees. Memecoins are not limited to the Farcaster community because of their good communication power, so we see "Meme goes out, funds flow in, and the Farcaster ecosystem makes a fortune."
3.3 AI Agents + Channels
This year, Channels was redesigned to a membership system because the previous Channel format did not work. Although some Channels became influential communities, they did not bring large-scale high-quality content and increase daily activity. The new version of Channels needs to rely on the founders of Channels to manage and operate them carefully, but it is still not easy to operate a community well. But we can see that projects such as the Fan tokens of Channels launched by Moxie have tried to incentivize the content and interaction of Channels, and Cura launched by Openrank has tried to use AI agents to revitalize Channels.
Cura can provide each channel with an AI agent built on OpenRank to control members and curate information flows, manage the wallets belonging to the channel, launch channel tokens, and automatically distribute rewards to top-ranked contributors, thereby realizing channel automated membership management, information flow display, and reward distribution. The era of relying on AI agents for channels to conduct content governance and creator incentives is coming.
This is actually a featured application of AI agents in crypto-native social networks like Farcaster. According to Cura's goal, it will transform Farcaster Channels into a thriving and self-sustaining community. With Cura, Channels are no longer just a space for conversation, but a dynamic collective with its own economic system, trust mechanism, and social currency. Cura will become the growth engine of Farcaster Channels, and we need to wait and see.
3.4 AI Agents + everything
In addition to the AI agents mentioned above, there are other AI agents with their own characteristics on Farcaster:
· Community Ambassadors: In addition to @aether from the $HIGHER community, the $BLEU community launched @elefant, and the $MFER community launched @mfergpt, which can help the memecoins community answer questions, promote brands, and provide emotional value.
· Token launch: In addition to @clanker and @tinybot, there are @larrybot (a memecoins launchpad with a pre-sale internal disk mechanism), @wowza from wow.xyz, @heyterminal from terminal.co, @netprotocol from netprotocol.app, @launchtokenbot from beliefs.social, @jamai (an AI agents launchpad on the BNB chain launched by Jam), and @bogusbob (issuing tokens on Solana).
NFT launch: Summon @toka or @enjoyr in the cast, attach a picture and name, and you can quickly launch an open edition of 1155 NFT.
· Trading: Purchase tokens by summoning it in cast via @bankr.
Tools: @askgina.eth on-chain information search, @atlas Farcaster information search, @talentmate.eth to identify and evaluate on-chain builders and their contributions.
· Art: @zerebro creates and sells ASCII art, @artto-ai is an art collector, @palette is an art connoisseur, and @harmonybot helps hold user-generated and minted ASCII art NFTs for $CHAOS
Others: @quaestor DAO proposal analysis, @agentmilo conversational bot interested in crypto, art, and technology.
Obviously, this list will continue to expand, especially now that there are more and more AI agent launchpads, people interact with agents, and agents interact with each other. Farcaster has gradually become a social network where humans and machines coexist, becoming an expanded version of "Stanford Town", enriching the fun and gameplay of Farcaster.
4 Summary and Outlook
In general, from highs to lows, and from lows to highs, Farcaster has brought us many surprises in 2024. As a crypto-economy, Farcaster has achieved outstanding performance. What did Farcaster do right? Perhaps we can still go back to the three strategies of the team, growing together with the crypto world and the synergy with the public chain, the solid community and construction atmosphere, and the rich ecology brought by the open permissionless and programmable protocols, which once led Farcaster to lead the new creator economy and catch up with the trend of AI agents.
But we are not yet qualified to be complacent. The Farcaster community is still a niche community, and Farconmy is still only a small scale. User growth is always a problem faced by all emerging social networks. We need to continue to play the characteristics and advantages of Farcaster and attract more users and liquidity attention here. For 2025, we can still keep looking forward to it. I personally look forward to the development of the following directions:
4.1 Will Farconomy continue to be popular?
Clanker has gained a lot of attention and liquidity in the short term, and is considered to be the Pump.fun of Farcaster and even Base ecosystems, becoming an important part of both ecosystems. Although Clanker's current trading volume is only 1/10 of that of Pump.fun, fortunately, Clanker's ecosystem is still expanding.
Currently, the Clanker ecosystem not only has practical tools for Clanker, but also has ecological applications built on Clanker. After providing a coin issuance interface, Clanker v2 has higher scalability and composability. It is not just a platform but a protocol. There are also multiple projects based on the Clanker protocol, which enables not only the issuance of coins when issuing casts on Farcaster, but also a variety of coin issuance methods. For example:
clank.fun: A pumpfun-style frontend based on Clanker.
anonfun: clanker + anoncast to achieve anonymous coin issuance.
· tinyagents.xyz: Clanker-based AI agent memecoin issuance platform, @tinybot in cast to customize AI agents and issue tokens.
clankpad: When issuing coins in channels, owners can also get 15% of the transaction fees.
· @clankeroncall: Call 1-775-252-6537 to send tokens.
The expansion of Clanker's ecological territory can continue to build a moat and expand its influence. Therefore, Clanker is still worth looking forward to in the future and is expected to continue to be an important force leading Farconomy. Of course, some other distinctive memecoins launchpads and projects that have issued assets and are still working hard should not be ignored. Together, they will allow Farcaster to continue to grow with the crypto world.
4.2 Frame v2’s mini apps, the next growth point?
Frames, launched in early 2024, attracted a lot of attention. It is an interactive window embedded in social media feeds. Later, Open Actions launched by Lens and Blinks launched by Solana that supports Twitter also have similar functions. Frames supports reading user information and on-chain operations, which can easily perform simple interactions in the information flow within the client, such as transfers, transactions, mint NFTs, simple games, viewing personal data, etc. (A list of popular Frames is provided on Aistack). However, after a long period of trial and error, developers found that Frame v1 is suitable for limited scenarios and has limitations, such as limited size and interactive capabilities, slow image rendering speed, and can only be used temporarily and is difficult to find and save.
In this context, the Farcaster team launched Frames v2, which has a full-screen interactive canvas based on HTML/CSS/Javascript to achieve richer application interactions within the client, support applications to request on-chain transactions and signatures, and send notifications to users on the client. In addition to being able to open directly in the Feed, Warpcast also provides a very convenient entry for Frames in the bottom middle menu.
As soon as Frames v2 was launched, many developers built small applications of different types.
Games: On-chain social game platform / farcade (also supports Telegram and Worldcoin platforms), trading game / clankermon, farm management game / farville, social prediction game, 2048, etc.
· AI agents: The chatbot launched by @buttrfly can retrieve Farcaster data in real time based on RAG, and can find users, channels and popular casts. /booot supports custom creation of different types of AI agents in Frame, and also supports real-time online search. In an interview, Shaw of ai16z also expressed optimism about the application of AI agents in Frames.
· Launchpad: onsen can issue memecoins by setting different parameters directly in Frames.
Tools: Degen, Moxie, Openrank, Clanker, TradingView and other data dashboards.
DeFi: Stake mining and trading in Morpho, track and copy friends' transactions through /banyan, transfer money to friends/payflow, and send red envelopes Onchain Gift Pack.
WeChat's mini-programs in web2 and Telegram's Mini Apps are both very successful examples of building a diversified application ecosystem within social products. Relying on WeChat's huge user base, WeChat's mini-programs cover multiple fields such as e-commerce, games, and life services, making WeChat a super application that integrates multiple services. Users can "click and use without downloading" and enjoy various services conveniently without leaving WeChat. Telegram's Mini Apps, by combining the TON payment system to build a token economic model, encourage users to participate in and use applications, provide economic incentives for Mini Apps, and also achieve further adoption of web3.
Frames v2 already has the ability to host almost all types of web applications. It can easily support Farcaster login in Frames, and it can be used and used in the client. At the same time, combined with Farcaster's open social graph, composable platform ecology, and crypto-native on-chain operation programmability, it can provide an application experience different from other social networks and enrich the gameplay of the Farcaster client. I look forward to seeing more interesting Mini-apps in Frames v2, attracting more users to stay in the Farcaster client, rather than just watching from the sidelines, thus becoming the next growth point for user activity.
4.3 "Will Farcaster become a hotbed for the development of AI Agents?"
We have seen more and more AI agents on Farcaster. At present, the Farcaster ecosystem has become an important part of AI in crypto. Farcaster's open database provides valuable social graphs and becomes an important social data layer. In the future, more AI agents will be built in the Farcaster ecosystem.
In addition to having Farcaster social media accounts, AI agents can also be in Frames. In an interview, Shaw, the founder of ai16z, also said that "Farcaster will become a hotbed for the development of AI Agents", which I think is why Eliza quickly integrated Farcaster. What they want to do is to integrate Eliza into Farcaster Frames. Farcaster Frames can be embedded with payments or applications, not just chats.
AI agents can also appear in other ecological applications. For example, DotsML in the Digital City Native ecosystem allows external AI agents (such as Clanker, Banker, Atlas, etc.) to communicate with internal Agents “Dots”.
Of course, Farcaster ecosystem AI agents are not perfect yet, or their capabilities are limited. On the one hand, we need to expect companies specializing in AI to improve their basic large-scale model capabilities, and on the other hand, more developers need to make full use of existing infrastructure to unleash the potential of building AI agents. According to OpenAI's classification of AI capabilities, AI agents have already shown level 3 and level 4 characteristics in social media and DeFi. In the future, more independent and intelligent AI agents will show innovative potential in the fields of art, governance, etc.
Here are some of my personal expectations for the development of Farcaster ecosystem AI agents:
1. More AI agents frameworks and tool platforms will emerge to help developers and ordinary users build more abundant AI agents in the Farcaster ecosystem more conveniently and quickly. Currently, ai16z's Eliza has been integrated with Farcaster, and Coinbase has also launched the AgentKit framework to facilitate AI integration on-chain operations. I believe that with more convenient AI agents building tools, the number and types of agents on Farcaster will be richer.
2. Independent and autonomous AI agents with a trusted execution environment (TEE) will emerge. Current AI agents passively respond to human instructions to complete specific tasks. Living in TEE is the beginning of autonomous action for AI agents, so that they can manage their own wallets (automatically reward users and even complete transactions based on trading strategies) and interact using Farcaster accounts without human intervention. @tee_hee_he has already tried this, and Eliza Agent also supports deployment in TEE environments. AI agents with goals and active actions should not be too far away.
3. AI agents with real long text processing capabilities and memory systems will emerge. Through RAG technology, they can retrieve the integrated open Farcaster database and other vector databases of on-chain and off-chain data in real time, allowing agents to have a larger and real-time updated knowledge base, and remember the connection with each user when interacting with people.
5 Postscript
Farcaster's 2024 means a lot to me and many people. Thanks to all the friends I met through Farcaster. The main purpose of this article is still to serve as my own record of Farcaster's year full of surprises, and it can also serve as a reference for any friends who want to understand the Farcaster ecosystem. This article should have been published at the end of last year, but I obviously overestimated my writing speed. Of course, I may still miss a lot of things worth mentioning. Now that a week has passed in 2025, the Farcaster ecosystem has recovered from the downturn at the end of last month. Maybe all my expectations have been dashed, and all my judgments have failed, but some things are changing, and many things will not change. On the first day of 2024, no one could imagine everything on Farcaster in 2024. I believe that Farcaster in 2025 is still worth looking forward to, and there will still be unexpected surprises.
still keeping optimistic, and imagining higher ↑
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