This edition is sponsored by Purple, a DAO whose goal is to proliferate and expand the Farcaster protocol and ecosystem. Interested in sponsoring a future edition? Send us a reply to this email!
Farcaster News and Links
App updates
@dwr, a.k.a. Farcaster cofounder Dan Romero, announced a change to Warpcast that he called a "small onboarding improvement" (although in this editor's opinion, he might have been underselling it). Connecting an Ethereum address during onboarding is now optional. "If the user chooses to skip for now, they are automatically emailed a link to complete the process on desktop at a later point," said Romero, adding that this should extinguish the concerns about connect wallet onboarding being too difficult.
In conjunction with this change, the Warpcast web client now supports connecting Ethereum addresses. "Should make it easier to connect addresses with a hardware wallet since browser extension wallets are a bit more reliable than mobile," said Romero.
Another change to Warpcast this week: Granular push notification toggles. Romero announced the most-requested feature mid-week, which enables different types of push notifications to be toggled, including direct casts, replies & mentions, unread notifications, recommended follows, and trending casts. The settings can be accessed via the side menu under Notifications.
FarQuest, a @beb project, posted a screenshot of an early prototype for its gamified Farcaster ecosystem discovery project. "Be patient as we ensure @farquest launches as a high quality project!," said the team. More updates can be found on Telegram.
@cameron, a.k.a. Cameron Armstrong, sent Farcaster into the weekend with "a petite present for anyone looking to find new Casters to follow." He updated Stochaster.xyz after what he called "a long hiatus." The app makes it easy to find a random Farcaster user to follow. "Mindlessly tap and explore to your heart’s content 🥲💜🫡," said Armstrong.
@dylsteck, a.k.a. Dylan Steck, and @luciano, a.k.a. Luciano DeAngelo, launched Group Purple, an app that lets you bid on a @purple auction as a group. Users fund a Juicebox, add the Juicebox ID to Group Purple, and bid on an auction. Soon, the team hopes to have this entire flow integrated onto the Group Purple site, GroupPurple.com. Steck said the team plans to add more features and also make this a white label solution for all Nouns Builder DAOs. "We heavily believe in the future of group activities on-chain and this is only the beginning for us," said Steck. The project is open source.
Dev notes
Neither Amps nor Follows but a secret third thing. Discussion on the Farcaster Improvement Proposal focused around "decentralizing the social graph" has progressed since it was first mentioned by TWIF in the April 29 edition. The debate was originally between Amps and Follow, but @v, a.k.a. Farcaster cofounder Varun Srinivasan, has come up with an approach that merges the two concepts via a Links message type that expresses relationships between users. Architecturally, Links would be similar to Reactions, which are already supported on the Farcaster protocol, except that Links would not expire due to a time-based limit. However, there would be two main limitations on Links – each user would be limited to 2,500 of them, and each Link would be limited to a certain number of bytes. Links could be used to express different relationships, like Follow, Endorse, and Subscribe. "This proposal is in Draft stage, and needs your feedback!," said Srinivasan. Read the proposal and join the discussion here.
Did you see your follower count drop this week? Don't worry, it wasn't due to the quality of your memes... probably. "We're expiring casts, reactions and follows from ~3500 inactive users who haven't logged in since February," said Romero. "Without updated signatures from these users, we can't migrate their data to Hubs." The accounts will remain owned by the users, even though they have been temporarily expired, and users will be able to seamlessly resume casting next time they log in.
@thatalexpalmer, a.k.a. Alex Palmer, shared some tweaks he's made to the Warpcast web client using an Arc Boost. Palmer said his goal was to make the app monochrome and visually quieter. Some changes include removing redundant titles, removing the suggested follows section, and eliminating color wherever possible. He shared a gist if you'd like to add the boost yourself.
The most recent biweekly Farcaster dev call was held on Thursday, May 11. As usual, an agenda was shared beforehand. Srinivasan said that Permissionless Hubs and Permissionless Signups remain the priorities, with Permissionless Hubs "mostly there" at this point. In addition to the core Merkle Manufactory team, Farcaster builders @df, a.k.a. Discove founder David Furlong; @billzh, a.k.a Alphacaster founder Bill Zheng; and @betashop, a.k.a. Jam founder Jason Goldberg, joined the call. The timeline for deprecating Warpcast APIs was discussed, as well as status updates on a number of open Farcaster Improvement Proposals. Srinivasan noted that the team is leaning towards L2 for the identity and storage contracts. First-class ENS support in Hubs was also discussed, see the related FIP here, as was subcommunity support, which has its own FIP. The full recording of the call is viewable on YouTube. The next dev call will be held on Thursday, May 25.
Ideas worth sharing
Romero asked Farcaster: Why are you following so many people? He was specifically querying those who follow more than 2,500 users, and seeking to understand whether it was for to maximize content & discovery, to simulate a global feed, to actually keep up with 2,500 people, or some other reason. The most common answer seemed to be maximizing content & discovery.
That wasn't the only feed-related question from the Farcaster cofounder this week. Romero polled Farcaster about a possible swap of the Highlights and Following feed, so that Highlights became the default, including a boost for new users. Romero asked whether reactions would be glad, neutral, sad, or mad about that change. Glad and neutral reactions seemed to be most common.
By the way, Romero was also looking for feedback this week on which opt-in notifications users would be interested in for NFT-related on-chain events as well as whether a weekly digest of intersting casts would be compelling to users.
@grego recorded the first episode of Humans of Farcaster this week featuring @colin, a.k.a. Paragraph founder and Purple member Colin Armstrong. The episode hasn't been released yet; stay tuned to FarcasterHumans.com for the drop.
@jessepollak joined Romero and Srinivasan in this week's Farcaster Broadcast, which was hosted on Twitter Spaces. The trio of past/present Coinbasers talked in-depth about Base and L2 development using the OP Stack, as well as touching on some other topics, including the Blackbird Labs "Flypaper", how Base might change Coinbase, and a quick update on Farcaster protocol development. You can listen to the recording here.
Farcaster By the Numbers
Powered by Farcaster.network. Change calculations based on last week. Note that total casts and total users are both rounded to the nearest 1,000.
Weekly Active Casters: 1,400 (-150 compared to 4-wk avg.)
Monthly Active Casters: 3,100 (-125 compared to 4-wk avg.)
Total Casts: 665,000 (+19,000 week over week)
Total Users: 13,000 (+500 week over week)
Average Casts per Day: 2,378 (-265 compared to 4-wk avg.)
New Users per Week: 186 (-41 compared to 4-wk avg.)
Sponsored by Purple
Purple is a DAO whose goal is to proliferate and expand the Farcaster protocol and ecosystem. The DAO operates on Nouns.Build, Discord, and Charmverse.
This Week in Purple
Purple's Prop House round for Twitter bot developers is accepting proposals now through May 21. 5 ETH will be available in the Prop House round, to be awarded as five 1 ETH awards for Twitter bot developers to port their infrastructure to Farcaster. Developers must be currently operating a Twitter bot. Preference should be given to bots that provide useful, amusing, or engaging content. Find the details and submit a prop here. "How you can help: send this link to your favorite Twitter developer & encourage them to apply," said @phil, a.k.a. Phil Mohun, who had proposed the round originally.
Purple instigator @ccarella, a.ka. Chris Carella, joined The Juicecast to talk with @brileigh and @matthewb about Nounish DAOs, the Farcaster ecosystem, and Purple DAO. Carella talked about his career path and how he fell down the crypto rabbithole, his first forays into crypto and DAOs, and how he ended up focusing on Nounish DAOs and choosing to start Purple as one. Listen to the episode here.
Carella; @billzh, a.k.a. Bill Zheng; and @cameron, a.k.a. Cameron Armstrong, joined The Noun Square on Friday for the monthly Purple Radio broadcast on Twitter Spaces. Armstrong talked about FarCon which is coming up next month. Also discussed were some of the Nounish ecosystem proposals which feed into FarCon, including the Farcaster community curated jacket project by @les, who will be speaking at the conference, as well as the open Builder DAO proposal to sponsor it. Listen to the recording here.
Get to Know Purple
This week, meet Purple DAO member @kmacbeth.
TWIF: Why did you want to join Purple?
When I was working on a DeFi insurance protocol, I came across Farcaster Protocol as a potential solution for communicating with policy holders. I was impressed by the community of smart, driven, and nice people and wanted to contribute to its growth in some way. Purple DAO caught my attention as a way to connect and give back, so I joined the month after it was launched.
TWIF: What excites you most about Farcaster?
I am thrilled to see Purple DAO evolve from funding open source developers to supporting bold and innovative ideas that can bring more attention to Farcaster. It's exciting to be part of a community that is actively pushing the boundaries of what's possible with blockchain technology and it's impact on art and culture and so much more.
TWiF: Can you give us a few recommended follows on Farcaster?
I admire many members of the Farcaster community, and my list of favorite Casters is constantly evolving. Some of my current favorites include @morereese, @nicholas, @tadas, and @zachharris. I'm always open to participating in community events and discussions, and I look forward to connecting with other Casters. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or ideas for Purple DAO.
Upcoming Dates of Note
FarCon
June 10-11 - Boston, MA
Have an event we should add to a future edition? Send us a reply to this email!
Job Listings
Staff+ Distributed Systems Engineer (Merkle Manufactory)
Merkle Manufactory cofounder Dan Romero said that he's looking for a staff+ distributed systems engineer to work on Farcaster Hubs. Send Romero a direct message or direct cast with your GitHub or LinkedIn if interested.
Senior Engineers (Discove)
According to founder David Furlong, the ideal hire "already uses Farcaster, believes in it & wants to see it succeed 💜." The stack includes React Native, Next.js, and TypeScript. For more information, DM Furlong at davidfurlong.telegram for more info.
Have a job listing we should add to a future edition? Send us a reply to this email!
Casts of the Week
This newsletter is published with Paragraph.xyz. The format of this newsletter was inspired by Week in Ethereum News. With questions, comments, or other feedback, please send a reply to this email, or access the "farcaster-weekly" channel in Purple's Discord.