Dan Romero

Particularly excited about working with DoorDash. Most tangible mainstream use case for crypto in my 12+ years in crypto. https://x.com/tempo/status/2046575768071811451

MPP myths "MPP only works with Tempo" No. It's payment method agnostic — works with crypto and fiat, any chain. It's already been extended to Bitcoin Lightning; there's a draft extension for Solana. "It costs 1.5% to use" No inherent cost to using MPP. Individual payment methods may charge fees, but that's no different than today. Blockchains have different fees. Fiat methods have different fees. "It's less open" MPP launched with 4 payment methods on Day 1: Tempo (stablecoins), Stripe (various payment methods), Visa (cards broadly), and Lightspark (Bitcoin Lightning). Visa and Lightspark were each able to extend MPP in a matter of days. MPP does not have a complicated foundation structure — it's designed to be simple and extensible by anyone. It's also been submitted to the IETF as a web standard. "It's session based vs. pay-per-request" MPP supports both. The most basic version is pay-per-request. Sessions (payment channels) are useful when you want many small payments in succession at the speed of APIs, not blockchains. Fewer API round trips also means MPP is faster in practice. "MPP is specifically designed for Tempo / Stripe" It's designed to be as simple as possible. No complicated facilitator. No assumptions about specific smart wallet implementations, stablecoins, or chains. It separates secure HTTP communication from the payment rail. That's why Visa and Lightspark could extend it so quickly.

Why do we need another machine payments protocol? 1. Payment rail agnostic 2. Extensible -- other companies were able to extend it in *days* https://x.com/dwr/status/2034271032417067513?s=20

Tempo mainnet is live! We also launched a new machine payments protocol co-authored with Stripe called MPP. https://x.com/dwr/status/2034254589445456286

no one in line at erewhon had read the citrini article

"Why didn't you spend more of the money you raised?" Spending money can help with sign ups, i.e. you can pay to get the users to download and go through onboarding. What it doesn't solve is the most important thing -- retention. If 3 out of every 10 users that signed up continued to use Farcaster after 30 days, we would have been thrilled to spend the money acquiring more users. We had some brief periods where 30d retention was >20%, but those didn't stick. But the harsh reality is we never found an iteration of the product that could reliably retain users. Everyone will have opinions on what form of the product *might* have led to better retention -- reply bumping! channels!, something else! -- but the data never supported any of it. "So then why did you raise so much money?" An older Silicon Valley operator / investor once shared a good quip here: "When they are passing hors d'oeuvres, take two." Raising a lot of money is only a burden for a company if you spend it. So Varun and I always had the point of view to raise when timing was good for us (timing is 80% of fundraising) and then be disciplined on how we spend it. Our mentality was never to spend every penny because we had it. Rather, preserve as much as possible until a clear sign of product-market fit and then be able to rapidly deploy capital into something that was working (both in user acquisition and scaling the team). The amusing thing about being told "you should have spent more" is the divide: those who've never raised significant capital wanted me to spend it, while those who actually have raised large sums thought I was being prudent.

Closing thoughts for today. 1. I don't think I have all the answers. Spent 5 years building Farcaster and it didn't work out. I failed. That's life. 2. Proud of my team's work. Hubs and Snapchain were / are an impressive technical achievement and it was really cool to see a non-blockchain distributed system get a decent amount of use. Also think the surface area we were able to build across the mobile and web app, along with Frames / Miniapps was pretty awesome given how small our team was. I'll always appreciate how kind they were to everyone on the network given how nasty some people were to them. 3. I learned a lot from people on Farcaster over the 5 years. There was a lot of reasonable and good criticism. I'd like to think I spent a lot of time (months of my life?) reading what people had to say. 4. That said, there are a few folks on this website that are at best uncivil and at worst, actually misanthropic? 5. Now that I'm no longer in charge, easiest to just mute and let them howl into the void (on the protocol I helped build, yes you're really making the point that Farcaster failed by continuing to use Farcaster, lol). 6. Maybe these people will build something of substance in the world and get the last laugh, but seems unlikely. So I'll focus my time here on the people that seem genuinely kind.

people on this website who have never built anything at-scale armchair quarterbacking how we should have built the protocol *mute* goodbye forever

I'm supportive of Neynar stewarding Farcaster's development. I'm appreciative of Cassie's many contributions to Farcaster over the years. Hopefully there's a path forward together!

PSA Merkle sent out the final warps refund in USDC.

I'm thrilled to announce that I'm joining Tempo! Stablecoins are a generational opportunity and I'm excited to be working to make them mainstream. Also lucky to continue working with @v and a bunch of folks from the Merkle team.

lfg https://x.com/DylanAbruscato/status/2019085390905585859/photo/1

PSA on 1099s for tax year 2025 from Merkle If you submitted a W9, you'll get an email from Zenwork / Tax 1099. https://www.tax1099.com

IN THIS HOUSE OLIVE OIL IS AN INTEREST!

I would have liked to launch a token for Farcaster. Never had the stars align.

It's been a while — AMA (Will respond a bit later in one big batch.)

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zcunlMNeZB9Q1NASO3Kb3CKh1PWuFXZ28PjiftIEHgI/edit?usp=sharing

Given some rumors, wanted to post a few clarifications: Farcaster is not shutting down. The protocol works and will continue to work. There were 250,000 MAU in December and over 100,000 funded wallets. The acquirer, Neynar, is a venture-backed startup and plans to shift Farcaster in a more developer-focused direction. As for Merkle, we’re planning to return the full $180M raised back to investors. Over the last 5 years, we tried to be a good steward of investor capital. Finally, I bought my house with Coinbase IPO proceeds.

Can someone switch the cast button back please?

Neynar is acquiring Farcaster. Over the next few weeks, we’ll transfer ownership of the protocol contracts and code repositories, the Farcaster app, and Clanker to Neynar. They will run and maintain everything going forward. Some members of the Merkle team, Varun, and I will step back from day-to-day work on Farcaster and move on to something new. Rish, Manan, and the rest of the Neynar team have been building on Farcaster from the start. Neynar was one of the first Farcaster clients, and its infrastructure now powers much of the developer ecosystem. We think they are the right people to take over leadership of Farcaster and they’ll share their new builder-focused vision soon. This wasn’t an easy decision. Farcaster and the people building on it mean a lot to us. We’re proud of what our team built, and what the community built alongside us. But after five years, it’s clear Farcaster needs a new approach and leadership to reach its full potential. We’re excited to see what Farcaster becomes under Neynar, and we’re looking forward to this next chapter. Varun & Dan *** FAQ What’s changing? To start, almost nothing. The Farcaster app and Clanker operate as normal with most of the features you are using today. There should be no interruption to your day-to-day experience. For developers, we’re transitioning the protocol contracts and code repositories over to Neynar. They will also start running the developer calls. What is Merkle doing? The Clanker team is continuing on with Neynar, some of the team is joining another company and some of the team is planning to do something different.

🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 @nikitabier 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯

What's the TL;DR why $DRB is trending again?

Where is value captured headed in crypto? Four primary places to make money on a swap 1. UI 2. Asset (as issuer) 3. DEX 4. Chain UI is most lucrative today, but most pricing pressure and competition. Asset is most durable -- assuming you can maintain interest in the asset. Today DEX isn't too competitive, but in the medium term expect it to be commoditized. Chain is a good business but UX improvements at UI layer means consumers won't care what chain. Ultimately comes down to liquidity / best price & execution.

happy new year a few photos from break

Base is now the most popular client on protocol by messages sent. Opportunity for another client ✅

@garrytan 😂

Good overview of what we've done to support Clanker ecosystem projects recently from @tldr. 1. Burned accumulated native token fees 2. Redirected ongoing native token fees to creators 3. Highlighting teams through a variety of channels http://x.com/tldr_x/status/2000985292019253758?s=20

Clanker Update: Presales TL;DR -- we’re pausing future presales for now and working on a new Clanker launch feature. It will take a couple of months to build. We’ll work with interested teams to get feedback and iterate on the design before it goes live. A couple of weeks ago, the House team ran a Clanker presale. This was the first one using the v4 presale functionality (which is currently gated). The presale sold out immediately -- before we had a chance to announce it in the app. While the team hit their presale goal, only a few people were able to participate. This was bad, especially since we pre-announced it and many people on Farcaster wanted to participate. That’s on us. We should have required an allowlist. But even with an allowlist, there are still issues with the existing mechanism: 1. The mechanism rewards speed to buy, not long-term alignment. 2. There’s no built-in price discovery; the team picks a % sold and an ETH amount, creating an implicit market cap. This can lead to over- or underestimation. 3. Presale proceeds do not contribute to the token’s liquidity at launch. 4. The existing presale mechanism does not allow for cancellation or refunds. So we’re going back to the drawing board with three goals: a. Broad and fair distribution. b. Trading starts with deep liquidity at a market cap determined through price discovery. c. Aligned economics between teams and holders.

PSA We're going to start displaying content coins from Base app casts on the Farcaster app. We don't have plans to add coining from the Farcaster app, but the coins are already attached to the casts (as embeds) at the protocol.

Our priorities We covered this last week at the public protocol meeting. Wallet - Yield - Limit orders - Prototyping prediction markets - Manual trader outreach Clanker - Multivaults - Fee sinks, burner pool extension - Rethinking how to do presales / fair launch - Revamping Clanker Spotlight / new weekly roundup Mini apps - Minor bug fixes and improvements

Farcaster App DAU / WAU / MAU for the last 2 years

Farcaster app annoying bugs If you're consistently running into a bug with the Farcaster mobile or web app, please reply here. We're more likely to fix a bug if you have a screenshot or screenrecording!

Semi-regular Farcaster annoyances thread If you were BDFOFF, what would you have us work on? BDFOFF = benevolent dictator for one farcaster feature The more specific the ask, the better!

Clanker Update We're excited to be working with @gmfarcaster to highlight Clanker ecosystem teams. Expect to see a team every week chatting with @adrienne and @nounishprof on the show. First one was with @ranjan3118 of @farhouse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODubngEo58c

On the cast button moving to the other side: you get used to it after a few days. And then having search always in the same spot with context is useful.

Clanker Update We now own 1.9% of the CLANKER supply.

Farcaster has a bunch of clients. Choose your own adventure. @unooo.eth @recaster-fc @degenapp @fireflyapp @cura @zapper @herocast @baseapp.base.eth

In case you missed it To reiterate: We’re focused on building a a great wallet that will get more people to use it. Every new, retained wallet user is a new user for the protocol. We tried social-first for 4.5 years. It didn’t work for us. Wallet has been growing so we’re doubling down on that direction. That means new features and product positioning will be wallet-focused. If you’re not a fan of this direction: 1. Use another client, there are a bunch 2. Build another client 3. Consider another social network

Strategies for influencing the direction of Farcaster 1. Refer a lot of people who start using / keep using Farcaster 2. Switch to another client like @recaster-fc, @degenapp, @fireflyapp, @cura, @zapper, @herocast, @baseapp.base.eth, etc. 3. Build (or support someone who is building) another client. 4. If these strategies all seem bad, consider another social network.

To clarify: 1. Zinger is working on new trader outreach and growth, i.e. people not already on / active on Farcaster 2. He’s trading and posting in a personal capacity. He’s not paid to post or “shill” 3. He has no input / influence on the trending algo for tokens. 4. We want people on our team to use the wallet and the features we are building 5. You can always choose not to follow / mute 6. While Zinger can handle himself, if you want to be mad at someone, feel free to direct your anger at me. I’m likely fully responsible here for anything that is making you mad.

1. You can't refund a presale. Token has to be deployed. It's encoded in the smart contract. 2. Anyone buying in the presale has to wait 7 days before access to the token. 3. Team got 100% of the presale ETH (the purpose of the presale) 4. We've already said the next one will have an allowlist and we have future iterations planned.

The Clanker Presale sold out in less than 30 seconds. Congrats to the @farhouse team! - The primary goal: the team gets all the presale ETH - The token is now liquid, but anyone participating in the presale are locked up for the next 7 days. - We are planning to do an allowlist for the next presale. And we have future changes planned to the onchain presale mechanism. - Disappointing that more people couldn't participate, but optimistic we will improve for the next one. Step by step!

PSA -- We're doing our first Clanker Presale this week. - Starts Thursday at 9:30am Pacific - The presale will last for 7 days; anyone who participates in the presale gets the same terms. - 24 hours after the presale is over, the clanker will be live for trading. - We will be highlighting the project and team across a few channels. - Expect us to iterate on how presales work

Wanted to clear a few things up. 1. No one at Merkle is getting paid to "shill" tokens. 2. I'm the only one at Merkle who approves token-related news stories. 3. Our internal guidelines at Merkle: don't do anything where having access to our codebase or data would put you in a privileged position. *** That said, if someone on our team is trading or talking about tokens on Farcaster...that's fine. You don't have to follow them. You can also mute or block them. If something they are trading or talking about ends up trending -- that's algorithmic and the result of other people finding that useful information.

State of Farcaster, December 2025 (I'm going to be writing a series of casts this week on this topic.) Varun and I have been working on Farcaster for over 5 years. The goal has always been to build an at-scale decentralized social networking protocol with 1 billion people using it every day. This is a hard problem and while we've made progress, we are still many orders of magnitude away from achieving our goal. Since the early days, we’ve believed two things matter most: sufficient decentralization and product-led protocol development. (Links to both blog posts below.) That’s led us to make pragmatic, not dogmatic, decisions about the low-level protocol and make a lot of iterative changes with our own app. We were never going to make decentralization maximalists happy. We spent the first 4.5 years with a social-first strategy. We shipped a working version of the protocol that was sufficiently decentralized and allowed multiple independent teams to permissionlessly build on and integrate it. However, despite many different attempts (and a few short-lived spikes), we haven’t been able to find a sustainable growth mechanic for the Twitter-like social network, i.e. no product-market fit. *** Earlier this year, we launched a wallet in our app. It has scaled quickly and we think it's the closest we've been to product-market fit in five years. But how does a wallet help grow a social network? First, every user who signs up, funds, and starts using the wallet is also on the protocol. The more people that find the wallet useful, the more people using the protocol. Second, because there’s an existing social network, we can more easily build social features for the wallet that leverage the protocol. It’s far easier to add a wallet to a social network than a social network to a wallet. Finally, we believe the best way to grow the number of people using the protocol is a “come for the tool, stay for the network” strategy. (The wallet is the tool, the protocol is the network.) See the post from Chris Dixon below. *** Does this mean the protocol is now a casino? No. The protocol is a collection of casts, follows, reactions, identities, and wallets. As a developer, you can use whatever you find most useful. The system is open. Our app is leaning more into the intersection between wallets and social, but there are other clients like Uno, Recaster, Cura, Base, Zapper, and Firefly taking different approaches. As a user, you have control over your experience by choosing your client. And if you still want to use the Farcaster app, you can use the following feed and keyword mutes (e.g. try muting $) to shape your experience.

Update on Clanker Spotlight We're going to iterate on the format. A lot of feedback: 1. People liked seeing new projects highlighted 2. There were too many 3. Existing projects weren't getting the same treatment So for now, no more new spotlights. But will likely bring back with a set of guidelines / clear criteria.

> post something > someone creates a token based off it > why did you make me buy the token?

I was testing something. There is no token here. It's a random Ethereum address. I don't have the private key.

@julia on Cheeky Pint talking nuclear! https://youtu.be/a_i39TTzGQw?si=6Nk3jiJabRTqTjY7