What new developments are worth watching for at Farcaster?

Source: Bankless; Compiled by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

The Farcaster ecosystem has been growing rapidly, with new airdrops, new blockchains, and new features recently launched. Let's quickly review some of the major highlights.

Warpcast Rebranding: Farcaster is a decentralized social networking protocol. You can create social applications on it. We have seen a variety of clients (such as Herocast, Litecast, Super, etc.), but the most popular by far is Warpcast, which is the flagship application developed by the Farcaster team.

• That being said, many new users are confused by the naming divergence between Farcaster and Warpcast. People tend to ask "Are you on Farcaster?" instead of "Are you on Warpcast?" and so on.

• To solve this problem, the Farcaster team decided to simplify the process and renamed both the mobile and web applications of Warpcast to Farcaster.

• Another interesting detail: the team has discussed open-sourcing the codebase of the Warpcast application, which may trigger a new wave of projects to apply this infrastructure to other more experimental Farcaster clients.

Pro Subscription Plan: In addition, Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero has just confirmed that the team is preparing to launch a new "Pro" subscription level for Farcaster advanced users. Premium membership is expected to cost $10 per month and will provide advanced features such as 10,000 character lineups and 4 picture uploads per post.

• Notably, all proceeds from the on-chain subscription system will be distributed in a flywheel manner to Farcaster’s creator rewards program, which has been distributing $25,000 USDC per week to the top posters on Farcaster.

• “The protocol needs to find a long-term revenue stream that can continue to fund rewards for streamers and developers, not just any one company,” Romero explained. “We initially thought that storage fees could be used as an incentive, but we realized that in order to promote growth, storage fees should be basically free.”

Farcaster’s first airdrop: Earlier this year, Farcaster launched a native wallet for its mobile and web apps to facilitate more convenient transactions with its thriving mini-program ecosystem. Now, the wallet is gradually becoming a hub for convenient airdrops.

• Farcaster has some of the most active on-chain users, and crypto projects have been eager to win their favor. As a result, Farcaster has been working with third-party teams to distribute airdrops like $CELO and $WCT directly to Farcaster wallet users. To date, $110,000 has been airdropped this way, and more distributions are on the way.

• The idea is that these teams can attract new high-quality users while increasing the appeal of Farcaster.

• The first batch of airdrops averaged about $10 each, providing a convenient way to top up your Farcaster wallet. But Linda Xie, head of Farcaster's developer ecosystem, pointed out that some projects will exclude users who have participated in multiple airdrops before. If you plan to participate, consider holding as long as possible to maximize the chances of future distributions.

New ecosystems are coming: Base Base is by far the most popular public chain in the Farcaster project, but we are starting to see more diversity in the ecosystem. For example, the Celo and Monad Monad testnets have recently been integrated into Mini Apps and the Farcaster wallet, and even larger integrations are coming.

• First, Farcaster is currently developing a new Solana Solana wallet beta, which will be fully launched soon. Its arrival should be a significant catalyst in the Solana Mini Apps space.

• If the team continues to roll out support for new ecosystems like this, they will be well positioned to make Farcaster one of the top social activity hubs on all the top blockchains. Stay tuned for those developments.

Coinbase Wallet Integration: Coinbase Wallet, one of the most popular applications and on-chain gateways in the cryptocurrency space, has been completely rebuilt for the upcoming 2.0 version. One of the main new highlights of this revamp is the native Farcaster integration.

• In other words, you will soon be able to post and trade with Farcaster directly within the Coinbase Wallet. The wallet will include a social feed to scroll through and comment on, as well as a search and discovery flow for the Farcaster Mini app.

• This new wallet experience is not yet available to everyone, but you can join the beta waiting list through this form. If you are accepted, you will receive an invitation link.

• Given the reach of Coinbase, this integration will hopefully significantly increase the number of active users of Farcaster in the coming months.