Farcaster: Reshaping SocialFi's Decentralization Social Protocol

Farcaster is an innovative Decentralization social media protocol that provides developers, creators, and everyday users with an open and composable social layer. It emphasizes privacy protection and autonomy at the user level, promotes open-source and permissionless at the protocol level, and achieves a "mini-program" level of interactivity through the Frames feature at the product level.

Core Features of Farcaster

1. Decentralization architecture: Operates based on blockchain technology, without relying on a central server.
2. User control: Users have complete control over their data and social graph.
3. Open source and no permission required: Anyone can access the API or application to build new applications.
4. Composability: Provides a platform-level social layer that supports inter-application composition and unified social identity access.
5. Hybrid Architecture: Combine on-chain and off-chain systems to improve efficiency and response speed.
6. Frames feature: Allows embedding small applications in posts to enhance interactivity and user 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), handling the following core functions:

• ID Registration: Generate a key pair associated with the Ethereum address
• Storage Registration: Manage user data storage space allocation and annual fee collection
• Key Registration: Manage user public and private keys, authorize and revoke account control.

off-chain part

Composed of a group of servers called Hubs, responsible for handling data operations that do not require on-chain confirmation:

• Message processing: receiving, verifying, and storing content published by users
• Data synchronization and dissemination: Ensure the consistency and reliability of data within the network.
• Performance optimization: Reduce on-chain transaction requirements, lowering latency and costs

Social Optimization

1. Self-sovereign identity and key management
2. On-chain and off-chain data isolation
3. Decentralization storage
4. Autonomous control over data access and sharing
5. Cross-application interoperability and composability

Frames功能

Frames are small applications embedded in Farcaster posts that turn the posts into interactive platforms. Users can access various features and services directly within social media interactions, such as:

• NFT Interaction: Minting, Displaying or Trading NFTs
• Game: Simple games embedded in posts
• Content Subscription: Subscribe to newsletters or other media content

Ecological Economy

$DEGEN token

$DEGEN is a community-driven memecoin in the Farcaster ecosystem and has become the community's first token:

• For rewarding content creators
• Mint NFT
• Various applications and in-game transactions
• Support and fund community projects

Warps Points

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

1. Points Acquisition: Active Participation, Completing Tasks, Community Contribution
2. Points usage: pay fees, open new channels, gift to others
3. Points Management: Centrally managed by the Farcaster team

Openness and Composability

Farcaster is essentially a large ecological database on-chain and off-chain, allowing developers to build diverse frontends based on it:

• Decentralization, the limitation of a single frontend does not affect users' access to other frontends.
• Ecological diversification, developers can focus on specific areas to develop the front end.

Currently popular front-end applications include:

• Warpcast: Twitter-like experience
• Bountycaster: Working Committee Platform
• Kiosk: A platform focused on live streaming.
• Unlonely: Emerging Farcaster client

Advantages and Challenges

Advantages:

• Complete the initial user retention, retaining a large number of Crypto native users.
• Balance the needs of creators, developers, and ordinary users
• Do not rely solely on "Fi" incentives to retain users

Challenge:

• Limited payment method storage for Chinese users during registration
• User growth may test the carrying capacity of Hubs
• The content ecosystem needs to form a positive cycle, balancing Decentralization and content quality.

Farcaster's current main goal is to attract and retain Web3 users from Twitter. Its openness, developability, and composability are highly aligned with the spirit of cryptocurrency, providing a dedicated social platform for Web3 users.