Pour Yourself a Cup of Ambition and Build Your Own Client: GM Farcaster ep384

Gud tech. The agentic ad purchase process was very smooth. Thanks @warpee.eth & @adrienne 💚

“it’s time to make everyone happy with a good airdrop” sorry i totally forgot

Spent some time taking a look at the Farcaster client now that it's been open sourced: - Lots of good stuff! MIT license, web and mobile both in there. Installed in just a few min and built in even less, runs locally against the production API. Serious feat of development and S/O to folks that have worked on this at Neynar and Merkle - The client code is open but the API isn't; the client talks to a private API w/ ~600 unique paths (780+ operations once you count methods) - To be fair you don't need all of them & a good chunk is admin/internal tooling plus wallet/swaps/tips/quests; a minimal client could work with less but would still be a lot of surface area - The API allowlists origins; you can run locally (localhost), and farcaster.xyz / warpcast.com work; this is browser-level though (CORS), so yes you could proxy it but you'd be routing around a control that's there on purpose and can be closed whenever - So you can fork it, run it, change whatever you want etc locally but the biggest challenge is that there's no backend to point at - Snapchain stores protocol messages: casts, reactions, follows, profiles, verifications but not things like DMs, notifications, sessions, feed, or search - For example to generate a home feed a client needs to be able to read follows, fetch casts, merge, sort, populate profiles, count reactions, resolve embeds, paginate, etc. Snapchain doesn't do this, you need an indexer. Neynar sells one, or you build your own (not easy, also requires a lot of resources & maintenance especially with increased usage, which is hard to accurately budget for) - So three layers: snapchain (protocol data), an indexer like Neynar (makes it queryable), a product backend (DMs, auth, notifications, search, catalog). The client needs all three if you want to build your own - BUT with this open client you can now point at 780+ operations and see exactly how much product sits between the protocol and an actual app Good opportunity to learn & build more Folks that have expressed interest in taking the helm would benefit from sharing more details on how they'd technically operate and maintain this in a scalable way It's definitely expensive, requires multiple full-time resources, needs some sort of healthy revenue model There's enough public information now with the release of the open client to fully scope it out p.s. a token is not a revenue model, it just buys more time to get back to where we are now https://farcaster.xyz/manan/0xd058045c

“Opportunity for another client” I’ve seen many, many, many clients come and go over the past 4 years and I’ve tried most of them. Nouns funded 3 at $100k each as part of a prop years ago and two of the builders returned the funds. It’s not that easy. The best FC clients I’ve seen are those with niche POV like @sopha, or @zapper by @seb which was the best version for traders that I’ve seen (and I personally told @jesse.base.eth at Base Camp a year ago that @baseapp.base.eth should look at it. They should’ve gone in that direction). But even Zapper didn’t survive. We’ve seen a lot of big swings. Most people just want one or two features added into the main client. (FC math: my trending feed = @kenny chrono follow feed) But they don’t want to build their own. But the hardest part isn’t building the client, and open sourcing the client side will make that even easier. It’s getting others to use it. And trying to get it in the App stores. Also you’re not going to make everyone happy. So the open source code is best for those who want to tinker or who want to make their own personal client for local use. And I’ve seen a couple already that look great for this purpose. Just don’t be disappointed if you’re amazing client doesn’t find users. (and @six I read this with the 😏 as I’m sure you intended lol)

Yayoi, Dolly, Tim RIP 🕊️

Tim shaped my childhood, made it wholesome and eccentric at the same time ❤️‍🔥 RHPS is one of my favourite visual inspiration source. It was one of my thematic references for glass/tableware guide we made for /los-fomos too

Having fun with the open sourced FC client. Towncaster is a digital townsquare where casts appear as chatter when polled in. Channelcaster is a stab at a channel first view, allowing you to adopt casts into other channels. (Everything very experimental of course and also very ai sloppy design, but fun to tinker with nontheless)

Now that fc client is opensource, just want to share this again. If you are building a new client, please consider these ideas. https://paragraph.com/@nikolaii.eth/breaking-free-from-web2-social-media-traps-a-web3-blueprint-for-human-growth

Only one thing on my mind with all this client talk

It’s great that the Farcaster client is open source, now everyone who was passionate about how it should be open source will start using it to build new clients and fulfill the ideals of decentralization

OFAC - Matrix Edition

opportunity for another client

open source primary client https://github.com/farcasterxyz/client

This one has been a long time in the making. Both web & mobile farcaster clients are now open source. few notes: - snapshot will automatically be updated weekly. - we removed the wallet implementation because it's not part of the protocol. - we've hardened this code as best we can, and open source means more eyes. throw hammers at it, and if you find something, tell us via dm or file a github issue in the repo. - we won’t be merging in contributions, we’ll leave that decision for the next stewards of Farcaster. https://github.com/farcasterxyz/client

on Farcaster https://x.com/0fjake/status/2092762202650313080?s=46

I haven’t actually built one myself so I could be full of shit… but at the Hypersnap kickoff meets difficulty to create a client was emphasized by multiple devs. They mentioned things like custom feeds, spam blocking, the data model around threaded conversations (IIRC) and more. UNO spent like $1M making their client and Recaster spent $20, so we are average at $500k/client 🤭. Also Nouns spent $50k each for 3 clients that didn’t get very far so…it’s definitely not as easy as it could be. Maybe it’s the difference between making something and making something GOOD.

Good points I think people underestimate how hard it is to build a good client/social experience (especially without proper funding) And then once it’s built you need people to care It’s certainly not build it and they will come

I think all parties are in full agreement with this Whoever becomes the new steward/owner of farcaster, the intern must be retained We will absolutely riot (and fork) if intern is lost

one thing that struck me about the pieces that I caught last night: a lot of the things people proposed were clients. alternative clients with different ways of interacting with the protocol. why haven't those been built? and why does it take new management for that to happen? my brain is having a hard time reconciling the demand for more decentralization with demands for a central acquirer/entity to build weirder client experiments. "opportunity for another client" is a meme, but it's also true. be the client you want to see in the world.

And it will be glorious

It's true. 24 hours 24m $BETR in prizes Famous females in music over the decades

Honoring Dolly at Buckingham Palace this morning and at 9:25 pm last night they light up the Empire State Building in sparkling pink 💕 https://x.com/royalfamily/status/2092564347641868480?s=46&t=N80rptBytKhSU-csz4Akrg https://x.com/empirestatebldg/status/2092344839845105914?s=46&t=N80rptBytKhSU-csz4Akrg

Honour Dolly. Just go out and be good to people today.

Created a transcript and summary for yesterdays calls by @pichi and @geoffgolberg with @cassie and @suji again: https://gist.github.com/floAr/135ff74617ecab342ba9f3b314da7373 Included is an ai generated summary, as well as both transcripts if you want to grab your own understanding! First call: https://farcaster.xyz/~/spaces/01a03619-318e-0a20-f489-ffd45af17eac Second call: https://farcaster.xyz/~/spaces/01a03541-00ae-4973-4e5f-2ee1e8289567 Third 'afterparty' call had no recording, so no transcript

Seeing so much Dolly love on the feed, figured some of you might like this brilliant podcast series about her with talking a good bit: Also Ken Burns Country Music documentary, the episode on the '70s has a lot about her in a great episode. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly-partons-america

NY Times obit gifted article for y’all https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/arts/music/dolly-parton-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8FA.wJsZ.iuiej8fGaNsM&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Will be Dolly posting today https://youtu.be/pW2TgGy5gjY

My timer is set! btw my timer is an 80s song — I’ll send 500k $BETR to the first person in the replies who can guess the song.

If they can get the deal done, it’ll be a pretty cool story.

https://x.com/williamshatner/status/2092066725458268594?s=46

We’ve gotten a few questions regarding whether there would be an August round for the Clanker Ecosystem Fund and obviously due to the current uncertainty as to whom will be taking over Clanker, CEF is currently on pause. For information on previous rounds, please visit the website. We’ll update here when we have additional information. https://www.gmfarcaster.com/cef