gm we have a very special episode today we've got dwr dan romero live with us right now adrienne are you ready are you ready for this chew chew chew chew chew here we go and really quick we're gonna do a little intro and we'll be back in thirty seconds
welcome to gm farcaster bringing you everything from breaking news to spicy memes to the deep lure shaping this vibrant digital community more than just a show gm farcaster is your digital third space where the community connects the stories unfold and the culture thrives whether you're a daily caster or just dropping by we've got the latest buzz to keep you plugged in so grab your coffee and let's dive in with your hosts nounish prof and adrienne for another episode of gm farcaster
gm farcaster it is thursday february 6 and you are here with nounish prof and adrienne for a very special episode with our special guest romero cofounder of farcaster to talk about the insanity of the shipping that's happening in the past week or so and catch us all up dan how are you gm how are you doing today
we're so glad to have you by the way dan whenever dan's on like you're the like one of the few guests we don't worry about audio your microphones are very good so like quality quality mic so it sounds great
yes actually i just tagged you on twitter if you wanna retweet that and we will tag you on i'll drop the link in here really quick of adrienne can you grab the link from when we casted it where you casted it and just drop it in our little chat and i'll grab the twitter one it's a lot it just tagged you on the twitter one so it is going on and then great
on warpcast yeah that we're live now
he's got like a lot of distribution yeah he's got he's got people who follow him i don't know if you know he's kind of a big deal yeah so we yes we are one of the things we haven't quite figured out yet but we will is how we can get this do stream as well on warpcast and have it all tie in together so we're working on that but it's still a little tricky so
yeah i i think on that we actually want to get to a place where we can have the like minim minimized frame that can be playing in the background that would
ideal yeah
because then you could create that for any type of streaming right so like stream is an example of an app maybe someone lonely comes back from solana and wants to do things but like basically you can have these native creators that are doing video content much more integrated into warpcast
exactly
and i'd love to that would be funny if brian comes back have there been discussions about that
brian brian coming you know any discussion any indication that brian's gonna move back case
i just i don't know
and we appreciate that about you
we have a bunch of different things to to ask you about and we know we're gonna have questions in the chat too
saw wow we got a lot of tabs we got a lot of tabs we'll go through them quick yeah loved this and this kind of begs the question go ahead
because we're old
do you even know what a cpu is right like i mean gpus are the the craze now but you know in our era people cared about moore's law and like you know gigahertz like yeah well i guess megahertz
was gen z if you're in the chat oh okay well i have a feeling i know who that is and you're not gen z so
into okay maybe maybe shaya i don't know okay so we know some some people know some people know but i think some of them are a little older
if you know you know so yeah this is a playoff the intel inside and it's very i don't know marketing y and it kinda begs the question the question we had from matthew here that everybody has who manages the farcaster x y z account in other words who's the intern
i mean that that does the intern wanna be revealed like i think that the intern can remain anonymous and just be the intern right
okay alright we're gonna play it that way alright
it very much very much so think it's great it's been great to see more content of about farcaster popping up just in my feed organically so even without you you know without the farcaster account doing it but it's been great to see that account get really active so yeah i think everyone is how
how would you improve the account if i if i was to give feedback to the intern what would you what would you do differently
i like what you're doing i think a little bit more you know just continuing like to retweet and proliferate those who are creating on farcaster or about farcaster so media as well as the like you know when farcade releases something when clanker when you know all those different things just getting more push for those i think anything what do you think adrienne
anything that's great and you know i'm i'm not actually on x that often so i haven't been seeing as much the algorithm when i do go on does know i like farcaster content yeah so i'm seeing a lot of farcaster content but i think it's i think it's great so just more
just more just more just more okay see the difference between to the intern more let me explain something you've retweeted this and we have more like we have about you know triple quadruple who we normally have by this point in the show so right it makes a huge difference like even just to get more more eyes on all the things that all the people are doing not just us so that would be amazing but we're loving it we're loving in the increased exposure and i think it was it's time there's so much going on we need to start sharing it with the world so
yeah but great job whoever whoever the intern is we like what they're doing and this was really helpful by the way
so i wanna just kinda read through this and then ask you about it and see what else is in the plan this is from dan yes yesterday our current plan one grow the number of daily active users on farcaster that's been top priority for i don't know the whole time i've been here two this benefits creators because they have a larger potential audience three this also benefits developers because they have a large potential user base four super joining warpcast allows us to invest more time on growth number one five base bringing farcaster into coinbase wallet an app that has millions of existing users helps with growth number one six we're working on several big growth initiatives both product led which will be helping with this and marketing sales led more announcements here soon seven we're investing more time in outbound messaging you've likely seen our ex twitter account get more active recently and we will be doing more here as well product priority wise i'm just gonna read through this really quick make on chain ux great in frames increase sign ups snapchain protocol wise for developers snapchain cheap sign ups sign in with farcaster and a plan for dc apis client diversity see the cast below base will bring a large existing user base to farcaster graph warpcast will lose market share and that's a good thing for the protocol two there will be a bunch of other farcaster clients you can use today okay so let's dive into some of these things it was a lot and a lot of this ties into a lot of things that have happened in this past week one of them being my image behind me so woj has joined merkel officially and is now going to be working on the team with the team directly and he did make this announcement yesterday it was and he was like in our chat while we're talking about him and he gave us zero indication
at warpcast
was doing something i don't know like dog's getting where i was waiting our ai pets where are my pets you know something like that but then this was totally i did not see this coming at all so super is joining warpcast and then so what does that mean like what do you envision that job is doing what is woj sort of tasked with doing and what do you see why why did you decide to kinda move in that direction mostly your focus has been the infra and hiring engineers and and this seems like you're starting to kinda move a little beyond that and can you talk a little bit about those decisions
goal is to increase the number of users on the protocol that benefits creators and developers right the two constituents you guys are creators maybe you can dabble on the dev side of things for some of the frames
that you
guys have worked on right but but but the point is is that actually blends on farcaster which is cool and then obviously from a developer standpoint like your goal is like get people to use your app right and then i think where we have a bunch of great infrastructure today right you have the protocol you have multiple clients and now you have frames it's kind of like this developer surface area this programmable social network just need more people to be able to actually get to use this stuff right like that that that's the whole point right the the long term goal is a billion people using farcaster that's going to take a while and it that that's ambitious but like that that is like what we're optimizing for like that that's the success case right you have a bunch of the cynical or negative people will will like whatever do their own casting about that but but that's like what we are building that's what we've been building since the beginning things have obviously changed in terms of like where we're focused or like kind of the strategy but but the like end thing that we are trying to build towards is a a internet scale protocol that anyone can use and build apps on top of it and so well actually a lot of the infrastructure we've set out to build now exists and i think with snapchain like it'll kinda give us even more headroom to grow but the limiting factor is like we need more people to use farcaster right so that like that that is like the thing that varun and i wake up every day and think about it's like what what can we be doing to increase the number of people using farcaster every day so downstream of that one is we are limited on the stuff that we can work on we're a team of 13 and so hiring talented engineers and product people who can help help drive that and and we really believe in product led growth we've we've talked about this quite a bit over the years but woj woj is shown proven builder in the space like he he built the most successful other client on on the farcaster protocol basically by himself i mean he's added some other people to help over the last year but but more or less took that bet pretty early and has been successful on it and so in in a in a twenty twenty five where we're kind of it's like the make or break year for what we're trying to do our our point of view is like let's let's kind of have the efforts kind of be aligned and so he's he's joining the team as an engineer so it's like he he's working alongside any of the other people that you you may follow from the merkel team and i think you know growth is the thing that we're focused on so he's gonna go work on that alongside the other engineers in the team right so it's not like he he's off on a corner doing his own thing it's it's okay part of a cohesive strategy
but yeah i was trying to figure that out because i wasn't sure if he had a a different area that he was focused on where he talked where there was more like discussion of growth and product so i didn't i wasn't sure
if was i i think just the way to think about it is like he he has a proven track record in the in mhmm ecosystem and we're really excited to have him kind of like being a little bit more coordinated with us i think one one thing that's nice about a decentralized network is he can go run a bunch of experiments superanon being a great example of that right to have no input it's totally permissionless right from us but in a world where he's working with us at merkle varun and i are kind of like laying down like here here's the strategy here's the priorities and then working closely with the folks on the team to actually execute against that and so i think there is a benefit to having kind of everyone rowing the exact same direction and and collaborating obviously in terms of figuring out like what what are the the the experiments or ideas that we should be working on i think that the second thing and and just like that post there was a little stream of consciousness yesterday i just kinda saw it was funny like the base announcement there actually wasn't as much negativity and i expected there to be some and then i think yesterday with woj there was more negativity which i was expecting some and not towards woj but it's just like grumbling and so naturally when there's the grumbling that's happening on the network i wanna create a single place where people can point to and say here's the the clearly articulated set of reasons we're doing what we're doing and then i wanted to incorporate some of the other stuff that we've been doing kind of independent of the the kind of base announcement at the the superannouncement which is some of the
dan was what was the negativity and i actually didn't see much of it at all was it like i expect when i read it i kind of anticipated it was it the way this isn't decentralized
it's just a variety of different things yeah you know it's it's funny i always say i see the negativity and then people are like wait i didn't see the negativity i wanna see the negativity and then varun's like just don't talk about the negativity because now you're you're creating like a streisand effect for it i think the reality is i i spend a lot of time on forecaster and i read a lot replies even though i don't acknowledge them i like i i i do listen and and kind of get a sense for the network despite contrary you know means
you know what's helpful for that you know what's really helpful for that the trending feed
just i look at it every day
yeah there know there was a time when i did but that now i i don't have time for the trending feed so i i think that there's like a couple of things so one would be oh woj built this the kind of like other client ecosystem merkle is nefariously acquiring a competitor to remove other clients from the ecosystem it's like people just like memory hold the day before it's like coinbase with their big existing coinbase wallet app is rebuilding it from the ground up and like completely new experience and they are front and center putting a farcaster feed normally most people on protocols in crypto like when you're trying to get people to use them that's like celebrated of yes more people are adopting this they're using it like that that's good for me if i'm excited about protocol
yeah
but i think there's just generally a set of people who who like their immediate reaction is how can i take a negative take on this because maybe it's engagement farming or just that's how you're wired but like i i think like skepticism is fine like that's actually healthy like but there's a way of doing it without constantly just being negative and so look i i have to deal with that that's my job but i think that there's a certain aspect of just like we're gonna continue to make progress
i think there's critical feedback and then there's just general negativity general negativity isn't helpful critical feedback is helpful and i've seen you listen to that and respond to that and and even incorporate some of that when it's when it's useful i did wanna ask this question basically people
people who who take the time to to offer feedback in a kind of like critical less emotional like more just like hey here here are some thoughts like i i spent some time thinking about it i actually tried to think from your perspective a bit too that naturally is someone i'm like woah okay like i i should actually engage more here like this is this is a like a gift it's like valuable
yeah
not helpful
okay fine cute yeah but like you're you're just not gonna get the the same level of engagement for me and then you can kinda get self righteous about it being like well oh you just don't wanna listen to the truth and it's like okay first of all like if you're actually serious like put it put it next to a name not not like
oh yeah anon stuff
yeah which not gonna i think that there's a time and place for a noun non stuff that's actually great i think superanon's great i think the noncast is great but there's an aspect of like have a little bit of courage if you if you kinda wanna criticize like be willing to put it next to your name and it's like oh well i'll have repercussions it's like wait wait wait what what world are you living in like that doesn't actually happen
so happen
we literally had this conversation yesterday too and i was like very very much in that camp of like stand behind your opinion you know you're there aren't gonna be the consequences that you think there are it rarely unless you're a whistleblower in a large agency or something in that case okay but like most of the time it's you're you're overthinking it and like just stand behind it and have a conversation because then you can have a conversation about whatever that is with the person rather than some you're not gonna respond to that kind of thing on an anonymous take so yeah and i i totally agree with that
casting like i i see it all like people think that like i'm not paying attention i i use i use farcaster quite a bit it's also personal motivation is anytime someone wants to be like oh i think you're you know i i i'm doubting your guys or doing that it's like that's fuel for the fire like i love just shutting up and executing so
i do wanna clarify this did you acquire super or just woj and that's what i that's what i was trying to just wanna make sure because i'm not so it's like and somebody else asked me this question too are some of the features that are built into super going to make their way to warpcast like scheduling there was you know there's a couple things that people use and really love
features that frankly we would have added maybe in the last year had woj not been working on so it's like kinda narrative violation we we actually do try to carve out space at the expense of our product like scheduling is a feature i think most people would want
you talk to the actual that's nice to hear
like we we like say it's like what are your top priorities like how can we be better be helpful and then you know kind of there's a group of people that seem to think that we don't actually talk to developers both like privately and then on a biweekly basis we hold an open dev call where we're actually really transparent about what we're thinking but like again it i think that there's a i don't know if it's like victimhood or just kind of it fun to be cynical like i you know there's a variety of different reasons when like i don't know we we're just trying to make progress and like we're not always gonna get it right and sometimes we take two steps backwards but we try to course correct and and just keep going and it's like i sit in the seat every day and try to you know move move the protocol forward a bit i think there was one question how do you punishing nonbelievers in the superanon chat logs we have no interest nor like you can ask woj we're not gonna like have access to that and so i think the goal of supercast have it run for a few more months so there's kind of a transition for people we'll probably look at features that we can add to the app that will kinda make people's lives easier i know people talk scheduling i know people talk multi account support which we've
that's the other one yep i was trying to remember there
was one more that people were asking we'll take a look at that we'll also talk to other developers in the ecosystem and then kinda like make the right set of calls and then you know there's a version where superanon becomes a frame right and then that can just kind of exist so that that could happen and then i think the goal is to open source super so it's actually like a you know something for the ecosystem for people for people to benefit from
i think that's great yeah so those are the yeah there was i was trying to clarify that because i was i have i a lot of people had asked me that and i'm like i don't know good question so let's jump into i wanna move to the coinbase wallet sure announcement and talk to you a little bit about that that's another big question on everybody's mind hold on where's the where's my jesse here it is so yesterday jesse casted this hello from coinbase wallet and the day before that we had the announcement with videos you were in that talking about this integration of farcaster's feed within the coinbase wallet so couple questions on that what exactly does that look like and and what's the sort of goal of that and then also when do we expect to see that i see that he's testing it it seems like he's testing it but i'm i don't think it's live for everyone yet and like what's your like what's what's exciting you about this like what's the what's the big push here
yeah so one very much base should tell their story their timelines i i'm not speaking for them
okay
my sense is that there's still a bunch of work to do so i don't think it's launching tomorrow although they could surprise me based on that cast but i but i think that they do have a decent amount of work to kinda there's a lot of complexity
because they're rebuilding the whole thing it's not just about that
number of different things they're doing
farcaster so there's a lot of work to kinda go add to kinda get to some level of feature parity with warpcast because i think that that's the desired goal is like you you anyone on on farcaster could go use coinbase wallet than than their new app when that kind of is out as as the daily driver for farcaster and we're gonna do a bunch of work on the the backside on the protocol side of like to just like kinda make sure that stuff works i think the the second thing is the big big unlock for us is like this is a a serious serious is the wrong word because people building clients can be serious i think it's it's a well funded big investment from the biggest most credible company in crypto in in terms of adopting the farcaster protocol and which i think is a unique thing that hasn't happened is they're bringing their existing user base right so there is a net new group of people with funded crypto wallets okay who are now gonna plug into farcaster and provide potential bigger audience for for creators as well as you know funded wallets essentially for people who are building frames if they're doing stuff on chain and so i think that that is that's why it's really significant is it's the first time we're actually having another app bring a significant number of users right like one one reality or critique depending on who you are of farcaster's growth strategy thus far has been this product led growth through warpcast right it's like we our our belief is that no one else is gonna do the hard work of bringing users if if warpcast isn't willing to do that and we've had some some people do some sign ups but for the most part like new sign ups come through warpcast that will not be the case in a world where coinbase wallet like allows you to just onboard a coinbase wallet and you know have a farcaster sign up that happens within it
does does is coinbase wallet gonna be an actual full client or is this more like i'm it's hard to like we'll
frame for i think just assume that it will be okay like comparable to warpcast will there be every single feature and all the things that you need i i i think that probably not but i think i i think people will be impressed with the execution it won't feel like a kind of like afterthought based on kind of stuff that i've seen from them and and talking to jesse and the team aniri is on on farcaster been pretty active she was at dev day like she's she's leading on that side john granada who just joined who i previously worked with at coinbase he's really great he was in the video like he
he's driving so he's in this he's in whoops yeah he's in that video
i basically if you care about farcaster to think that there's any version of this where it could be seen as a negative like this is this is the whole reason to build the protocol and like why we've been trying to do everything we've doing so other people start to adopt it and then bring users right so i i think it's a huge huge win for us as a protocol and i'm very happy in a world where merkle with warpcast loses market share market share like that that that's great like you know it it there was a whole narrative for last year of like no other clients can ever be successful like you know warpcast is better funded and like all okay narrative violation like the the that that is ending
now we got a better funded person starting
right so now i i don't think warpcast is going away and like i think we're we're gonna keep working like hell you know bringing we're gonna keep making hires and like try and accelerate because it's it's good for the protocol to have the best possible clients but i think like this is actually client diversity like in a world where coinbase coinbase can actually run a farcaster client for an indefinite period of time they're a profitable company right like so i i think like that's one of the concerns is like oh well you can't have a farcaster client that could then actually become like a long term sustainable business right like what right merkel actually needs to figure out a more long term sustainable model before you know so so i think like for the protocol like we we now actually have new set of things to like be like okay this is the actual existential risk so i i i i think like i i i can see like some arguments of like okay well like a builder in the ecosystem woj no longer building but we're we're we're bringing in a new big app into the space in addition to the existing clients that exist right it's like recaster herocast firefly farquest but they all benefit because now anyone using one of those apps or clients now can reach a larger audience right and so i i i think anything that drives the total number of people using farcaster every day and then probably a secondary metric on that is like the number of funded wallets in farcaster clients every day for developers right because that that's actually what the developer is trying to do for the most part it's like use my app and do something on chain and so i think getting that as high as possible is that that that is the goal
this is a good question from pichi should for small devs should they be or like solo founders should they be spending time making clients or lean into frames and mini apps instead
i think the developers should do what they wanna do so some developers are just motivated by like they wanna build an app and like it just like they want it's it's cool that they can build their own client you can't really do that on twitter at this point that that that's a tinkering like just like scratching an itch great go do that if you are telling me i want to build a venture backed startup and like really optimize for growth i would say one you should be thinking about forecaster as like an initial go to market but probably not gonna get you there the whole way and that's just being honest now i'd like to get the number of people using forecaster enough that you don't have to leave that that would be awesome but i do think frames is this like very lightweight easy to integrate way of kinda getting distribution of farcaster ability to send notifications with your existing web website you have to build a website anyways or web app so right not why build it as a frame like you're you're just gonna get these additional features and in a world where what you are building has an on chain component our goal with frames is to just make the the ux
make it even easier
seamless a 100% reliable on mobile which i think that that has always been the the challenge for most crypto apps
or or websites right is that they work fine on desktop when you have your kinda like whole setup but if you try to do it on mobile it's this like dance between multiple apps the deep links don't work you don't get like and that's actually nothing against the wallets it's just the the reality of
how just where we're at at the moment
operating systems work and so i i think my belief is that the best ux for crypto apps on mobile until until the operating systems change significantly is you you're kind of pushing the app to the user in it in inside an app that has an embedded wallet right and and so crypto wallets can also add that kind of social component which i think we're gonna see with coinbase wallet right so they're starting from a wallet and becoming a social app and i think with warpcast which we've talked about this at the dev meeting and i think you know kind of publicly is we are adding an embedded wallet people will submit an existing wallet that they yep they have because like if you if you already have a wallet in rainbow you don't wanna go move that we we think that's completely recent yeah i i my dwr.eth exists in rainbow like i i i'm gonna wanna use that when i wanna use that wallet but there are a lot of people when you actually talk to them especially people who are earning from warpcast rewards they don't have a wallet yet and then it's like okay i have to download this wallet do the seed phrase then go connect it to warp like two
you had to do that with your kids didn't you adrienne because a couple of your kids got have accounts on farcaster on warpcast and earned some rewards recently and they were having the same kind of thing
create a new wallet and i got them enss and all that but someone else yeah but but you do you have a everyone has a wallet
there's a learning
way to think about it is you you're just leveling up right like if you get more into crypto you probably aren't gonna want just whatever the limited embedded wallet is like you're gonna want all the power features right and so that's where you're gonna upgrade to like okay i'm gonna go use this this app like which gives me full range of of motion and yeah i i think like registering an ens is another good example if you were to ask every user on farcaster in order to get a username to go register an ens on l one yeah like good luck right not happening our in app purchases are a a blocker for people like now asking people to go like set up a wallet fund it with eth then go get an ens like no that is like no like reasonable person if they think about like consumer scale whatever thing and and it's like crazy you could have like a $30 gas fee or something so i think we just have to approach it from like make it as easy as possible for people who show up to farcaster through warpcast soon to be you know coinbase wallet get onboarded and then to the degree they wanna do something on chain just like that should just feel completely seamless
love that
and then to the degree that you're posting interesting stuff on the network get rewarded in usdc which again if you actually talk to people who are not as crypto native it's actually somewhat stressful to get paid in something even like eth because you're seeing your balance change literally every time you open up the app versus the normal experience for people if they get paid is that number stays the same yes there's an in a silent killer in inflation but that is very slow gradual and visible i think most people just like to see their balance and then the only time the balance goes down is if they choose to spend it right
the yeah and i know that adrian's a fan of moving that usdc to eth i still think it's it's smarter
i think it would stay
if people opt in to
yeah that's the stuff
well mean and also if it's in the we love usdc in an embedded wallet it just makes it much easier if it has a nice little swap function so mhmm and i'm so can you talk a little bit more about that like is this built on what is this what is this embedded wallet built on what's kinda the feature's gonna be that kind of stuff
yeah so we're still we're actively working on it we're getting some test feedback of like user testing it's the biggest new surface area that we've had in the warpcast app and i mean i don't know since dc so like it it's it's like a whole other maybe frames okay so it's like those are the so it's a completely new thing for us obviously there's a lot of existing wallets out there to learn from but i think one thing we're just trying to do is like okay what is the simplest version that we can get out so that we can actually start learning and it very well could be that when you're using an app like warpcast the types of things you actually wanna do with your wallet as like the primary actions are different than if you're using kind of a wallet that is kind of like bank account first right so social social first versus bank account first is is like one way to think about that and so you know good examples like you hit the send screen on most apps they're like put an address or
know they're a little sophisticated ens okay well that doesn't actually i don't know my i don't know people's ens like i would assume maybe nounishprof.eth you own yep like yep like adrienne.eat i don't think you own
she does not right so
so it's like she does own not adrienne.eat or she did
buy not adrienne.eat it's by giving
yeah
that much easier
yeah i can just literally type adrienne to your pfp like okay like this is the person i know this like just like if you if you use venmo i i know probably has some europeans on the call but venmo is really nice in the us because it actually just tells you the number of mutual people you know right and so it's like
oh okay
i do like i do like even the pay button
but like there is a lot that you can actually do if you start from a i have social context about this user rather than i have a an address with balances right
right
but you know what f f venmo because i refuse to create new social graphs on applications like this is damn why i'm on farcaster like it's i i need this to be the last graph i ever make
we're too old we're too old for this we can't do
this is it
one keeps asking me to add friends like why do i wanna add a friend on venmo i don't i just wanna pay you
i just i just wanna pay the person
to do the work and every time i wanna pay someone have to go through the extra hoops of like making sure but i just i just won't so please far please dan
yeah i mean the other interesting thing that just like in even building a wallet and you know i think we'll probably be more conventional to start at least here but like one interesting thing is you just go through the flow so if you go through any eth wallets flow the first thing they do is ask you to send it to like an address mhmm and if you go to cash app which like i think is like amazing ux for sending money
it is
like yeah
like okay like what what why why did crypto decide that like you start with an address which is like this like intimidating screen it's like kinda technical versus like if you if you literally open up cash app right now it's like this like beautiful green screen and like just feels nice every time you hit it and so i think like one of the things that i find interesting that we're not again gonna have day one but there's a potential is if you start from the experience of like just design this like you would design a normal web two money experience right like what are what are some of the things that you can just like say okay every other wallet does it like this because they basically all saw what metamask originally did and then iterated on making it slightly nicer design looking like literally that's what every wallet looks like because i'm old enough that i use bitcoin wallets and bitcoin wallets didn't have the same vibe for the most part of of what metamask did in a lot of ways right red wallet maybe but like i i think i think it's worth like starting from not like what do crypto wallets do then it's starting to think a little bit more like what are these like massively successful web two apps do
i didn't think about the cash app one i send so i send bitcoin to my niece and nephew and i i do it through cash app just because it's easy and they they can easily access it and if they do wanna sell it it's easy so that ease of use for people who are not into crypto and really don't wanna dive in but i wanna have them get exposure rather than just giving them a $100 that makes it very easy so the easier we get to that point i think is is great and starting with the person first like i like being able to go to a profile on warpcast hit the pay button and send money to somebody if i want to at that you know at that moment or tag you know pay bot or whatever so it's it's i do i do think that's a a good approach it makes sense
yeah and and look i think we'll probably have a standard send screen because that's what people will expect and it's like you do but i think that there is room for improvement how about that and so like i think you'll and i think what we're just trying to focus on is there's lot of surface areas so get something out no it's probably rough around the edges but keep it as like simple and well executed as possible and then continue data rate from there probably have to run-in five minutes so maybe we
okay long way alright so really quick channels we've gotten a couple questions about channels and where those are going seneca had a good cast about this i disagreed with them i like channels but i wonder with and i guess this is a question for jesse that we'll have to get him on here and ask you know does that support you know extend out to something like i know that's not the protocol level but to something like a coinbase wallet do you see the value in channels is this something you're going to be thinking about i see the value but
maybe not everybody does are outside of creation everything is accessible via api so it's kind of in this like it's not completely decentralized but it it it's like you can programmatically do whatever you want with channels modulo creating a new one and so open rank is actually doing a bunch of work here yep great so i i wanna push back a little bit it was like there's actually a huge developer surface area for channels more than it there has ever been in the history of the the feature i think where we are basically in a holding pattern again with channels is channels don't drive growth and the the fallacy i think is like oh we'll just add one more feature just one more feature bro one more feature or like it's like it that doesn't actually work it has to actually have a like core thing that works at at a pretty basic feature set to then actually be like okay let's go add all those extra features because it's only gonna compound what what's happening and what we found is that channels work once you're in farcaster and so the the primary thing to solve for is we need more people coming into farcaster now can we improve channels can we add like a request flow that's nice yes like we we could go work on all that but you're gonna make people on the existing network happy but you haven't solved the the fundamental issue and so i think when you're just being really focused you have to have everything blow from the top priority which is get more users on the protocol and so what are we doing it is making frames better because it's the differentiating thing it's the reason people like wanna kind of come to farcaster as the crypto nativeness right so making investment long term there so that that works i think is important but that doesn't actually even bring people in today right like just because we have a better transaction experience is not gonna like get people to sign up they might might you know play around with it but i think that the the second thing and again hiring woj and and that's the like the other priority is like how do we increase the number of people inviting people on farcaster and then the retention component as well as reactivating people
i did like i like the new
new invite flow with the recommended channels i think is great like that's definitely one good approach to be able to do that and recommend channels to people i think it's helpful
yeah the thing is is they all feel good like we can make all these features that make it kinda feel like meta level like oh this this is exactly what i want oh i i'm i just love seeing my channel here i love seeing my name here people don't click like it's just like so low and so what what we have to do is drive the number of people coming into farcaster and then retaining and that includes people who already have been here and then bringing them back yeah and then snapcheam we have to do like the the protocol you can ask woj like protocol will not scale much more beyond where we are if we had another version of like frames v one slash degen and we had another 10 x right it just like the whole thing will kinda fall over like you'll just have all these issues with other clients and so we we have to kinda make that bet so we have
so that's the focus on the foundation
structure like yeah that we that i think are like the right long term ones if if we had another like unit of people which we don't because you know we're we're only 13 but adding people right maybe we would be working on channels as another bet but i think in our mind frames and snapchain are the kind of two long term bets and the more immediate term priorities like how do we how do we increase the number
so frames will i mean so channels will still be here it's just not a priority it's gonna kinda just stay where it's at right now and then maybe be revisited
yeah and and i and i think i think open rank cura is working on some stuff there so i think that can work i think i would imagine coinbase wallet will support channels to to whatever degree that they do but i think yeah i think it's just like a priority thing it's like
yeah
i wish i wish we could also be working on channels i have a ton of ideas for channels just i don't have any ideas that i think will will go back to driving growth it will basically make existing people happier which not a bad thing but like making people happier on farcaster does not increase growth because basically a lot of people who are already happy with farcaster go talk to people and then they don't necessarily like invite them and or get them to retain so that's the thing we have to actually go solve
this is a very important question to toady wants to know where your sweaters from it's from
there you go
yes love that guy
by the way it's my favorite twitter account
dan don't answer this question tony's just trying to make you the shamoth of this podcast
it's not cashmere it's marina wool i i'm a i'm a man of the people okay i think i think the other question i just saw in here is there's a lot adding a new users tab trending again thing that will sound good and it will feel good if you look at it the percentage of people who will actually click through to it will just it'll it'll just be low and so i think that that that's actually one thing i've learned with had it a little bit at coinbase but definitely with with farcaster is you can go make a feature that like literally everyone's gonna be like this is amazing like you you did all the right things it it feels great or people get excited about think about like streaks starter packs like we've we've done these things some of them just taken from other apps and implemented they don't actually like
they don't drive growth
like it's like they move the needle like one or 2% and so there's a strategy you could say okay well let's do 50 of those and then you've had a 100% increase but i think where we still are is like it's worth us taking more bets on can something move like stuff by like a 100% or 10 x like that that's actually what frames and then i think with degen like you got a 10 x like it it has happened so like that is actually the thing that we have to kinda be thinking about is like what what things can we work on to to go towards this idea of getting more people to use the network that have asymmetric upside and that that that's kinda like where we're focused
one last question animated pfps coming back no
we'd like to have it it's it's just like a ton of optimization work so yeah you want the technical reasons so what people do is they like put these animated gifs we didn't have like checks for this before so it was kinda like a loophole and right the promise is these animated gifs are like 200 megabits or some something crazy so the artist gets to have this like crazy pfp and it's cool and if you have an iphone 15 and like you know an unlimited data plan like it's great and then if you have any other phone that is not like top of the line especially with android just because it's just like apps are very good about optimizing that kind of stuff your app just like doesn't work
yeah
drive growth it'll make people happy i am a 100% on you know on board of that and on margin do we get like one or two artists who are a little bit more excited about using farcaster i'm sure yeah but i think it in terms of like with a small team where we just don't have the time to go do that like if we're spending that we are not focused on the the top level
yeah total and it's funny because if you click on the profile pic it's still animated like you can see it
so if you see a yawn you know it's animated just click on it there you go yep okay i know you need to get out of here is that one thing i wanted to mention to you and to everybody we do have another show called the hub that dill stack's been doing on tuesdays he did a good roundup of the dev call he's been kinda tapping into the more tech side so make sure you're checking that out if you ever need to feed something to him to talk about he'll he'll be there on tuesdays looking forward to farcon are you looking forward to farcon are you excited
second best second to what i don't know say boston
it's true it's only second
well no that that's that's the best part it's new york people have to let you know that they think it's the best city when the reality is if it's truly the best city you don't have to let people know that
farcon farcon
we love you very much
you like time
just awesome okay
get them because i was gonna just do the most important ones but let's just start eagles or chiefs
bed like the eagles either like i i hope a meteor strike and neither team can win but but i think if you have to pick one i'd take the eagles
lesser two evils i'm with you on that
oh good question
it's gotta be somebody from the roman empire
to them
my initial one was jonathan swift who i i find quite funny and i think would like work well for interesting a modern era but you know my my english major is showing
yeah yeah but that no that's interesting yeah that would be a good one
still the best feature i we've ever launched that we never actually figured out how to like make work and like every time i get a location update i think it's the coolest thing
actually like the i like the alerts of the people who are coming back i think that's great by the way the yeah yeah or haven't cast it in a while i think
that's i have like a whole doc i have a bunch of docs that you know every so often i go into and it's like notifications i wish existed it's like that yeah love that one
i mean i'm partial to yoink because it's on chain and you can do it but i i think farcade farcade wins the wins the best executed frame
farcade's my favorite yes okay for words dan what is your favorite game in farcade do you have a favorite
you feel like a words guy
you should jump in there and just play around
that's okay we're all bad at black hole and yeah whatever that new one is they're they're very hard but they're they have a words game now they have a words game you would like that one tony chat tony i know you're listening i mean this is what i do is i see when
do the updates i do the quote tweet for the distribution and then i like move on to like the next like
next thing you know there's a lot so
yeah you would like words i can't stand it but toady is incredibly good at it so i'm telling him to challenge you because you'll enjoy
yep i like framedull too yeah
is much discussion in a way
go ahead quick know go ahead my lightning round alright ruining your lightning round wallet hardware wallet lost forever or seed phrase leaked
your choice because you
i think i would rather have the hardware wallet lost forever because it benefits every other holder versus the seed phrase leaked is is someone stealing from you so i don't i don't actually want that
oh i am partial to ask gina and then atlas is also good too like i used to find them all annoying and now kinda like you know they're probably bubbling up for me yeah i mean i mean clanker don't really think of as a bot but like that's also probably there
last physical item i bought with crypto i don't i don't i don't know i wish there was more stuff to do like one one frame i wish existed is like you remember where it's like one thing per day oh amazon bought it yeah mad.com is the same team yeah but like oops it's a really good idea the that is like the thing i wished existed every day is like here's this item we have 10 of them like click you can buy and then it we'll push it
there's an idea for slice go do that make that frame
that yeah mean it just be amazing like i would even like yeah anyway so like i i think it would just be really fun and social and it's like you'd be competing to like quickly get like who could get it if like it's some item that no one wanted versus other items and then
yeah that's a really good idea
know like everyone's
yeah something like that i know oh and then yeah you you're not in the shitcoin trenches are you
good to know
basically every good financial decision in my life is is a result of holding and holding for a very long time and every bad yeah decision in my life is thinking that i'm george soros
know whoever's a good trader at the moment
love it adrienne anything else before we before we let dan go we have a few other things we'll talk about after he leaves well we're talk about you after you leave no i'm just kidding but anything else that you wanted to grab before we leave
well i'll give you five minutes i mean we're basically i a few hours so let's talk about rewards what do you wanna know
alright wait what's the i think it's really useful i know you're making some changes in terms of the way that the rewards are being distributed and also you upped the rewards which is great how are how are you seeing like that change that happened in this past week are there any new iterations coming for that
yeah so i think that we started out with like a pretty limited group of people whose engagement we were counting because i think we wanted to observe i mean it's limited it's like several thousand people but like we wanna avoid having the thing get like civil right so i see you have a bunch of like bots and it's like if you're if you're just ranking all engagement the same like easiest way to have the leaderboard not feel good and i think what we did was then we adjusted for the number of followers you have which tended to work pretty well for two kinds of accounts the most popular accounts on the network which the reason they're the most popular accounts despite the auto follow cabal meme is the reason that people fall like they were on that list and it is because they got the most engagement and they stopped using farcaster early on right mhmm and
they just didn't leave they just kept being consistent too like kept
yes this is literally just post every day like you're gonna get more followers and stuff like that and we by the way the other thing is like we adjusted for active followers right so we all the followers that have turned which make these numbers big we remove those and so then everyone's kind of roughly on an even playing field of how many active followers that they have right the the second thing is we we then gave new accounts like basically a boost so you kind of like reduce the amount of engagement based on the followers you have like normalize it and so then it's like you can actually be account with fewer than a thousand followers and and compete the group that was the most unhappy was the like what you call messy middle or whatever and so we we changed the algo to help give those accounts basically a little bit more of a boost relative to you know the follower adjustment happening for the small accounts and then obviously the big accounts get plenty of engagement now because they're the biggest accounts and so i think we're still iterating on trying to like even that out and i think like one way to think about it is if you were to take the top 100 so ignore the top 10 because that's always gonna have outlier and like mhmm i i think it's like more about like if you were to take the top 100 accounts in on the leaderboard they should actually roughly have a distribution of like what the kind of like follower distribution on the network is for for these kind of like accounts and so i think one of the things we've done is we've increased the number of accounts that can actually count towards the engagement score which i think that that's worked but i think that those accounts don't follow the new accounts so one of the other thing is like a lot of the bigger accounts are actually really good about following new people because they're like very pro wanting to like have farcaster succeed and so you have to kinda like balance that a lot and so i think we're just gonna continue to tweak it and then we kinda say like how how does the distribution for the top 100 accounts like that that's like up for any given week and if that actually feels like it reflects what the network is then then the algorithm is probably good for those who ever were at a like you know university where you grade to a curve that's basically what you're trying to do here is you're trying to adjust and so it's not always gonna be perfect and there will be kind of metas that pop up there was a bunch of like farming rings that popped up even last week so it's like we we're gonna nerf those and i think it's just about continuing to adjust so that it feels reasonably achievable for anyone on the network if they have a good week to place pretty highly
which i love that i love that that that opportunity for anybody to be able to to hit that
i wanna be
really clear it's kinda funny you're talking
about people who have a bunch of followers right so it's like way bigger audiences than they even have on x yeah so it's like no you're you're already you're already actually in the scheme of things like you actually have a pretty big audience and a bigger audience than you get on any other network this is classic hedonistic adaptation you know relative as like you what you're doing is you're just saying the joneses over here have more i want more like and so yes it's a natural human being simple like on a relative basis like the gdp per capita and then the like following audience is like pretty good basically relative to other social media
yeah i agree like middle class in
than everywhere yeah like it's it's yeah it's upper upper class in in many other countries yeah exactly dan avoiding saying the word cabal that's funny only use cabal unironically people adrienne anything else really quick
no we we thirty seconds i think we covered all the major major major noy news probably didn't get into snapchain details as much we'll let dylan cover that but yep dan if we kept you late it's your fault because
too interesting
he creates interesting content
he he creates interesting content what are you gonna do
yeah one more thing that we that i kept seeing that was pretty awesome was people talking about you know they feel like farcaster's about to pop off this was my favorite version of that because it was funny
but feel free but yeah so it's been i think it's been great and we think that everything's gonna pop up so thank you thank you for popping in we love it yeah thank you so much come back anytime alright that was great that was awesome thanks dan and we had a few other things that we wanted to just bring up and a lot of that is there was an amazing video that was out that cassie did and we have to just like show some of that really quick i did clip a little part here which i was gonna throw the music on but i'll just do it just so you guys can see it a little bit but it's amazing so go check it out the whole thing is pretty long it's the whole song and i don't wanna get copyright violations but it is so good and it will get you really excited for farcon so go check that out it's very cool and if you haven't applied yet please make sure you do because farcaster applications are out now you didn't make it into the video i'm sorry toady
no it's not your worth
if you didn't make it into the video it's not your worth and then you can also claim you're not in the arse aristocracy and milk dab for milk dab for engagement yep i know if you know you know
if you know you know yeah so make sure you go fill out your application the first round of approvals went out the other day so if you have not gotten your approval yet you've applied you didn't get approval yet just be patient there's they're just starting to go out they have to go through them all they're they're looking at everything so just give them a little bit of time don't panic and yeah you should see something soon by the way i loved cj's application notes here i've played over 600 games of geocrush i've left people on red with words for days at a time i'm the least interesting caster in the bunch but at least i have spunk and i would disagree with the first note on there by the way did you see this
oh my god noun pappy i i see you in the chat this is incredible this was really amazing but by the way i didn't know that we were selling face masks too i had no idea he is a non pappy so there you go true has to be a non but this is this is awesome this is a great way so if you haven't haven't seen the merch there you go now you've seen all the merch because it's everything's in this in this video including my hat so there you go loves the hat the hat's great i love the hat i love the hat oh by the way from the video is this the cabal everyone's talking about i love that clip that was really funny so just a few other quick things i'm just making sure i covered all the stuff oh by the way okay nobody is asking the important question what happens to the dog woj we need to know what happens to the poor little doggy i think he'll be fine maybe somebody will take him over who knows maybe he'll make him cco and he'll just become this little mascot of the whole entire network this is really big i wanna make sure everybody who is in purple has seen this this is from matthew gm mcbain and i wrote up a proposal for the fc meetup at eth denver and requested 3 eth in funds to cover it i'm including a screenshot of the proposal here but if you own a token would appreciate your vote so go give this a read and if you are a member of purple get to voting it should be i think they put it on chain yesterday so probably it may be later today or tomorrow it should be live for voting so go check that out
i have a couple other quick things just this one little note from july because i just like it life can be beautiful and i don't have the patience for it not to be if you're not following july you're really missing out lastly we wanna shout out lil nouns our new sponsor they're amazing adrienne went on and did a little tutorial yet the other day bought a lil noun did a video it's out there you can go check it out and see how to buy your own little noun should you want to do that and if you do please tag me and let me know and i'll add you to this cute little thread that i have going of all these cute little little new little nouns so we'll talk more about that next week adrienne i think that was all my things what did i miss that was awesome that was a great chat that was a lot it was a lot to process but it
great chat
that was a lot just a heads up i did ask dan to come by monthly and he said he would we just gotta get on his calendar and coordinate the the the timing but we should we we love when he comes on because
yeah totally
and he just talks it's great like he's a he's a yapper like he really he could do he could yap for a living so yeah so it's it is it is we always tend to run long
new i'm about i'm looking for it i was looking for it because it was not ready earlier jody and now i see it
i looked before the show and it was not there but i see it now so one second i'm pulling it up yes we have one more thing to share and that is our little recap video that we have a little collab with the amazing zero rights media and we have a very cool monthly recap that we're gonna be doing last month on farcaster and you can go check this out we did our top five things that we talked about in january that were shaping the farcaster ecosystem you can go check this out and thank you toadyhawk and jack wilds i'm not sure who did what this editing was amazing because what we gave you was okay and what you what you turned it into is is beautiful and we thank you so go check it out
respect because that is some good stuff because you guys
it was okay
it was okay but you have no idea how long it took to get to okay when you suck it in i know
and they almost need to
post the original so you guys know we probably should okay but it looks great it looks amazing check it out and obviously if you're watching gm forecaster you also are terminally on farcaster and staying up to date but many of your friends are not so this is like this is a recap to reach people not on farcaster maybe people who are using coinbase wallet and will be learning about farcaster wallet soon but definitely appreciate a reshare on those
and you can actually mint this episode on pods so i believe yeah
oh on zora sorry on zora not on pods on zora so go check it out you can do that oh my god pichi did you just get in little now oh that's amazing thank you
yeah you gotta tell us what the pet is i'll have to go look at it 8215 i'm gonna go look at it and i'll shout you out later today that's amazing love it that's crazy yeah on yeah that's on zora you can mint it you can go check it out very excited thank you toady for bringing that opportunity to us amazing and i do wanna do a quick shout out to david because he was just in africa i don't know if he's still there for the opening of the noun school in uganda and it's pretty amazing so david i saw you in one of the videos and it was good to see you there and can't wait to hear more about that
amazing so anything else before we sign off we have oh tomorrow we're doing poker so we're gonna be playing poker i have some folks from borrower friends poker are gonna be joining us not burberry she can't make it we got some crew from burr friends poker we're gonna have some little nouners if you're a little noun i've got seats reserved for every single week that we're gonna be doing this we're gonna be doing it for seven weeks we'll be chatting on stream you'll be able to watch the game while we chat about all things farcaster and lil nouns and all the fun things and we do have some some prizes we have some we have some cash money we'll be giving away with that so very exciting so if you are a holder of little nouns or you are a gm farcaster hypersub holder i'm gonna be shooting that out i'll let you know how many oh that's so funny how many seats i have left and i might shout it out and look for some more folks so if you like to play poker let me know that's a the retainer head is really weird i can't believe that's the way you make that i love it that by the way is one of the founder of nouns is punk four one five six and that is one of his favorite heads is the retainer so there you go you're in good company i've never understood that but it is it's one of his favorites so there you go little bit of trivia for you and then monday i'm almost afraid to say it so monday we're gonna come on at our regular time in the morning and then in the afternoon at 2pm eastern we tentatively no we do we have it confirmed scheduled that we're gonna have luca nets on so we're gonna do it as a special show in the afternoon just luca just talking about what's going on with abstract chain and pudgy and all of that he was supposed to be here yesterday he had to cancel very last minute so we're sorry about that but we're gonna we're gonna run it back next monday and then wednesday we have our regular show regular time friday we're gonna have debbie soon on who wrote whose book is launching very active she's at debbie d e b b i e on farcaster and her book is coming out next week i think so or the or the week after and we're gonna be chatting with her about that on friday the hub will be on tuesday with what did i forget vibe chat i
a vibe check on wednesday
yeah for all the news
and subscribe to the events so you get reminded and there's a there's a there's a ton going on and we're we're very excited about it
so yeah amazing pichi that is so cool by the way i am gonna be shouting you out and sending you some degen we're gonna be talking more about little nouns we did do like i said adrienne did this little video so that you can learn how to grab one there are at any time there's four right on the website that you can pick up so you can kinda choose so if you wanna learn more go check that out there is also a happy hour i'll post something about that that happens in the discord might be on twitter too for the first hour i think that we're gonna do that'll be happening on thursdays at 5pm eastern so i'll shout that out as well and yeah great so
think that's it oh in east denver there was one more thing one more thing we are having our brunch our karaoke brunch at east denver on saturday march 1 the frame rsvp frame will be happening shortly it will go out but if you are a hypersub gm farcaster hypersub holder or a little noun holder you'll be able to rsvp for that event it is a free event for all of you and yeah i think that's it it's gonna be a lot of fun whereas that event is also sponsored by little nouns and farcade and we are gonna have a farcade tournament with a new game that they will be releasing during our eat denver really excited about it and we'll have some other fun prizes and fun things happening as well so get your song ready karaoke is not required but encouraged okay adrienne anything else that was a lot thank you guys for hanging with us that was
can choo choo all the i got nothing else there's a lot happening and by the way there is going to be apparently there's one more person who's coming on to the team to the far he and he wouldn't tell us who but i believe the announcement's coming monday any guesses me any guess yeah
there is a there is a ponder poll you can go make a prediction
did you see that poll and who did you pick
i did my track record for ponder polls is interesting so far so that i won't do them anymore
i was thinking it might be ted
deployer's an interesting that's an interesting idea that could be jtgi wouldn't surprise me what which wasn't a surprise the timing
mm-mm not proxy samuel huber i could i could see that or maybe dylan anything no
alright i think oh could be could be could be that's a
good call it's not you
better not be you we're a team damn it alright and with that everybody we're gonna call it there this has been so much fun thanks for having us thanks for joining today ted wouldn't that would that would be i think that's that's what my pick was on the ponder frame you know but that might be too obvious i don't know i feel like they're still doing a lot of focus on the on the engineering side but i'd love to see ted come in that could be amazing so alright well we'll know on monday it looks like so more on that we will see you monday morning we will not be on tomorrow we also have some other guests coming up later in this month so polymarket polymarket intern is gonna be on with us so talking right before the oscars we'll do some polls we'll do some predictions so with that everybody this has been amazing we will see you on the timeline and happy friday bye bye