Farcaster, a new decentralised social media protocol, has seen a tremendous spike in users and nearly doubled their revenue in an impressively short time. What sets the platform apart, and will it be here to stay?
Built on an Ethereum scaling network, Farcaster enables users to create various apps that fulfil various social functions. The most popular and recognisable app built on this network is Warpcast, which many people compare to X, formerly Twitter. As users can write ‘casts’ and ‘recast’, much the same as Tweeting and Retweeting.
However, unlike X or other web2 counterparts, all apps built on the network enjoy the benefits of a decentralised structure. Most notibly, they are interoperable, lack oversight and users maintain control over data.
Clearly, Farcaster has many covetable features for web3 and Web2 audiences. Why did Farcaster’s revenue nearly double in less than a month? The answer is the latest feature — Frames.
Frames enables embedded functionality, which means being able to ‘do stuff’ on other sites or apps without leaving Farcaster. For example, if you wanted to subscribe to a newsletter published on your feed, Farcaster would enable you to simply press a button within the post and successfully subscribe. If this was another social media platform, you would be redirected and leave the site to do the same thing.
With features like Frames that have appeal to those beyond the Crypto audience, Farcaster fans eagerly anticipate its mainstream adoption, while critics argue there is more for it to be a widespread success.
What do you think, will it be the next big thing?