Farcaster: Reshaping the New Paradigm of SocialFi

Farcaster, as a decentralized social media protocol, provides users with an open and composable social layer. It emphasizes privacy protection and user control at the user level, adheres to open-source and permissionless principles at the protocol level, and achieves interactivity similar to "mini-programs" through the Frames feature at the product level.

Core Features of Farcaster

1. Decentralized architecture: operates on a blockchain, relying on no central server.
2. User Data Sovereignty: Users have complete control over their data and social relationships.
3. Openness: Anyone can access the API or application to develop new applications.
4. Highly Composable: Provides a unified social identity and supports cross-application interoperability.
5. Hybrid Architecture: Combining on-chain and off-chain systems to improve efficiency and response speed.
6. Frames feature: Allows embedding small applications within posts to enhance the interactive experience.

Technical Architecture

Farcaster adopts a hybrid architecture of on-chain and off-chain:

On-chain part

Mainly includes smart contracts running on Ethereum Layer 2 (Optimism), responsible for:

• ID Registration: Generate a unique identity associated with an Ethereum address
• Storage Management: Allocate user data storage space and charge an annual fee
• Key Management: Handling user public and private keys to achieve secure message signing and authentication.

off-chain part

It consists of a network of servers called Hubs, responsible for:

• Message processing: receiving, verifying, and storing content posted by users
• Data synchronization: propagate and synchronize messages in the network
• Performance Optimization: Reduce on-chain transaction requirements, lowering latency and costs

Social Experience Optimization

1. Self-sovereign identity management: Users have complete control over their identity and authorization.
2. Data isolation: Sensitive information is processed on-chain, while non-sensitive data is processed off-chain.
3. Decentralized storage: Enhance data's resistance to censorship.
4. Precise data access control: Users can set the level of information sharing.
5. Cross-application interoperability: A unified identity can be used across different applications.

Frames功能

Frames are a major highlight of Farcaster, allowing small applications to be embedded in posts, such as:

• NFT Interaction: Directly display, mint, or trade NFTs
• Games: Play simple games while browsing social media
• Content Subscription: Provides a dedicated subscription button

New Model of Asset Issuance

Farcaster not only transformed the social infrastructure but also provided new ideas for asset issuance. It has become a launchpad for community tokens, culture, and ecosystems, offering a good interactive environment for high-quality crypto-native users.

Ecological Economy

$DEGEN token

$DEGEN is a community-driven memecoin in the Farcaster ecosystem, with a wide range of uses:

• Content Reward
• NFT Minting
• In-game trading
• Community Project Funding

Warps Points

Warps is the internal points system of Farcaster, used to incentivize user participation:

• Obtain through social interaction
• Can be used to pay platform fees or open new channels
• Centrally managed by the platform, unlike tokens.

Openness and Composability

Farcaster is essentially a large ecological database on which developers can build various front-end applications, such as article platforms and live streaming platforms, increasing the diversity and innovation potential of the ecosystem.

Advantages and Challenges

The advantages of Farcaster are:

• Initial user retention has been completed, retaining a large number of crypto native users.
• Balanced the needs of creators, developers, and ordinary users
• Provides an open ecosystem that encourages innovation

The challenges faced include:

• The registration threshold may limit certain user groups.
• The capacity of the infrastructure needs to be enhanced with the growth of users.
• How to strike a balance between decentralization and content quality control

Farcaster's current goal is to attract and retain Web3 users, particularly creators who value account autonomy. It aligns perfectly with the spirit of crypto through openness, developability, and composability, and is committed to moving users within the ecosystem to a social layer that truly belongs to Web3.