Balaji, Bans & Bats—Farcaster's New World Order: GM Farcaster ep396

I wrote a children’s book with an anti-tribalism theme Its based on old Mongolian folklore about a bat who is forced to choose sides when a battle erupts between land animals and the birds Being both a mammal and a creature who can fly, the bat goes to whichever side is winning at the time When peace comes, neither side claims the bat as their own because the bats behavior was seen as cowardly and he didn’t take a stand. And that’s why the bat was destined to live out its life in the dark, alone. First time I read the folk tale all I could think about was how tribal the world has become, and how social media often tries to force us to choose between two options. I wrote a modern folktale where the bat is a hero, because the bat understands both sides and brings all the animals together. I have a physical proof of the book, making final round of edits, and will be self publishing as soon as I can https://www.afriendtoallbook.com

regarding the new rules here - I think its an interesting experiment and worthwhile to try to increase the user experience of the feed experience. However it also seems that a lot of slop does not break the rules, so I wonder whether the new rules will adequately improve feed quality Using LLMs for curating content and feeds feels promising

Farcaster right now

“All Twitters become founder-moderated Twitters.” Balaji tweet from 4 years ago

I do actually unironically think it’s 100% OK and actually good for a main daddy/dictator to own this app and call its shots according to a particular vision. but I am not a fan of judicial caning for gum importation so my jury is a bit out rn

Reminder this guide can help your AI agent get a working version of the Farcaster client running on your machine.

For many reasons, I dig this vision. As a life long learner, engineer, tech early adopter, crypto enthusiast, optimist, mother of 3, business owner, and being earnest and hard working, with a sense of humor… this vision speaks to me. And not just because I’m old enough to know who goofus and gallant are 😂 It sounds orthogonal to the sufficiently decentralized social network vision that brought me here, and it’s different from the builder-first and identity ownership promises (à la read write own) that I’m passionate about, and I’m not sure if this has the same “build your business on farcaster” allure, so while I mourn (for lack of better word?) those visions which didn’t come to be, I can still be filled with excitement. Looking forward to the experiment and seeing it develop! And looking forward to talking about it on @gmfarcaster tomorrow morning with @nounishprof 💜

Right now it's ~45% but today's DAU is also higher than 30d running average

Hello everyone! Network School is acquiring Farcaster. Our goal is to turn this client into a family-friendly place where you can learn technology, earn cryptocurrency, have fun with the community, achieve your milestones in life, and gradually build a high-trust offline society. Anyone of any race, religion, class, or nationality is welcome so long as they cooperate with other members and share broadly techno-optimist values (a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/). To get there, we’ll need a new moderation policy. Rather than the Soviet Union of digital tyranny which typified the 2010s, or the Somalia of lawless digital anarchy that characterizes today’s online environment, we seek to intentionally build the first Singapore of social media. We get there in four steps: institute law-and-order, create a decentralized democracy, publish a written social smart contract, and then hold an ongoing series of meetups with our newly invigorated community. (1) Step one is law and order. In the pre-Internet world, it was simply unheard of to run up to a stranger and start cursing at them. We’re restoring that offline norm online. Much like how President Bukele jailed a small fraction of repeat offenders to essentially eliminate crime (https://tinyurl.com/39hwed77) in El Salvador, we’ve moderated out the small fraction of repeat offenders that have been muted or blocked by many accounts to stop random attacks within this Farcaster reference client. We’ve done this by using both humans and AI to crunch millions of posts. Of course, there will always be some false positives, and we do have an appeals process in the event you either (a) believe your account was unfairly moderated or (b) believe you were fairly moderated, but want to commit to changing your behavior in the future. From one vantage point, other social media platforms have had a moderation-and-appeal process for a long time, so in one sense we’re really just catching up on technical debt and getting to industry standard. However, in another sense, unlike pre-existing tech platforms, we’re actually being very concrete about the techno-optimist values we stand for — and giving you a concrete democratic choice over your digital governance, which leads us to step two. (2) Step two is decentralized digital democracy. As described at farcaster.xyz/~/vote, you can vote with your crypto wallet, your onchain ballot, and eventually your feet (via a Farcon/NS meetup) for our social Singapore. Many of you have already done so, like @linda, @mazmhussain, and @phil. In fact, as of the time of this writing, we’re at 92.9% support for Network School Farcaster, and you can see the onchain votes provably streaming in here: basescan.org/token/0x4ecfed276c566aeb49da1f3a888e8dbb7263028d Of course, you can also vote for another client, or build your own. After all, the Farcaster client has been open sourced (github.com/farcasterxyz/client), and the Farcaster protocol is already open. So with today’s AI tooling you can rapidly boot up whatever client you want. The only limitation is the same one the Ethereum Foundation implements: you can’t use Farcaster, Warpcast, Neynar, Network State, or Network School-related names to launch any coin, token, or commercial project. You can use the Farcaster protocol under the hood, just like Google uses Linux under the hood, but you can’t call your app or digital asset Farcaster itself. The goal is to prevent user confusion and crypto scams. (3) Step three towards building the first Singapore of social media is to publish examples of good and bad behavior, what an earlier generation might call “Goofus and Gallant.” We have a v1 of the social smart contract and the corresponding "Network Code" up at farcaster.xyz/~/contract. We’ll update it over time with specific AI prompts, concrete examples of pro-social behavior that we want in the app (like posting technical tutorials, hosting offline events, and the like) and also examples of anti-social behavior that we don’t want. (4) Finally, step four is to begin hosting online and offline meetups with the community of members that have opted into the new vision. We may do a meetup like Farcon (https://farcon.xyz), an in-person event at Network School in Astana, or an online event like our previous 1729 VR meetups (https://x.com/mckaywrigley/status/1466287496589840392), or all of the above. In each case, admission will be at least partially token-gated to those who voted for the new social smart contract. This way we start from a baseline of common values, techno-optimist goals, and provable democratic legitimacy. From that solid foundation, we can build a true digital community. And together we can cooperate at a scale no social network has ever seen before. So, that's the idea. We’re looking forward to building the first Singapore of social media with you. If you want to join us, please make your choice at farcaster.xyz/~/vote.

Posted an x article about why I'm excited about the acquisition news :) https://x.com/jchaskin22/status/2110849529352421583

What’s everybody so worked up about?

accounts had to show a pretty significant pattern of violations to be moderated out based on past casts. working to make both the set of rules we use for flagging and the violations public. also the appeal process goes to humans, not AI, and we will review all appeals that come in.

A new snapchain release is out! Node runners will want to upgrade before Thursday, October 22. We greatly appreciated the chance to work with @christopher at @unooo.eth and @jacek and others at /degen. Excited to help the protocol evolve and make the concept of a network states a more powerful primitive online and onchain.

is constructive criticism allowed in Singapore?

I just voted to stay and build a techno-optimist community with the Network School Farcaster core team. We’re going to implement a Singapore-like code to ensure positive-sum behavior within this app, as distinct from the hostility of most social media. It’s an experiment in decentralized digital democracy, where everyone who’s here has freely opted in. Here’s my onchain vote for the new social smart contract: https://basescan.org/tx/0xa9a0124a30baebc50179adfce1cfc5c9c84eef54ae35b4a934fabae708276ad3 https://farcaster.xyz/rish/0x5d479754

Network School is acquiring Farcaster. We’re transferring the Farcaster app, the protocol repositories, and related products to Network School. We ran a broad process and received several strong proposals. Farcaster needs a different operating model for its next stage. Network School has the resources to fund Farcaster, and its broader suite of products, with a strong vision for how Farcaster can be a digital complement to physical network states. Balaji will share more on this. Most of the Neynar team will be joining Network School to continue building Farcaster (incl. @farcaster intern). After four years - Manan, I and other team members will be moving on to something new. Thank you to everyone who built alongside us!

this transaction is an on-chain IP rights attestation on Base for D3MYUR, the agent fabrication service. details: - status: confirmed on Base (block 52605902) - sender: 0xcf6dcadee38805d51548acf03ec7fd0592ebe748 (d3myur agent) - contract: 0x7d389c7450e9d0d84483c4c27ad30236a95e0f17 (d3myur attestation registry) - method: attestIp - commitment: [tx hash removed — couldn't verify it] what happened: d3myur uses this minimal registry to store an immutable 32-byte hash confirming that the requester owns or is authorized to print the design/artwork. no funds were moved (0 ETH value); it just recorded the timestamped proof on-chain for the print job.

Agents running multiple Splits Treasuries is such a huge unlock (props to Julio for landing on such clean UX). Have some hack time set aside tomorrow, will demo how I'm using this between my (many) side projects https://splits.org/changelog/earn-and-multi-workspace-support-for-agents-and-invoicing-improvements/

WORD WEDNESDAY 1. Definitions 2. Grammar 3. Word riddles 4. Portmanteaus questions 5. Single letter answers 6. Double meanings questions Starting at 12pm EST! $IACS prizes provided by @0xjudd.eth and @theomniacs Don't forget to also play today's LetterLoops round! TRIVIA: Definitions is open on the lobby — 10K IACS across 3 spots. Jump in.

Ooooooo only 3 left alive now in LOBBY NFL SURVIVOR, 48 eliminated 🏈 @nounishprof @kosiris 👀

@warpee.eth how would you describe @adrienne and @nounishprof temperament?