What Is Farcaster? Frames Feature Launch Turns Social App Into Crypto’s Hot New Thing. So Is It Worth the Buzz?

Farcaster, a decentralized social media protocol, has been propelled into the limelight following the release of its 'Frames' feature on 27 January 2024. Since then, the protocol's daily user metrics have spiked into the tens of thousands. So just what is Farcaster's hype about?

A social media protocol

Farcaster is the brainchild of former Coinbase vice president Dan Romero, and former senior platform director Varun Srinivasan, who founded the platform in 2020. It is built on top of the Ethereum scaling network Optimism, and acts as a protocol for developing decentralized social network applications. 

The protocol is setting out to establish mainstream adoption of Web3 technologies through a Web2 social portal, and it seems to be working. The platform is now boasting over 300,000 users and 52,000 weekly active casters (posters), the platform is averaging 89,000 casts per day.

The app isn’t free, it charges ongoing storage fee costs to host user data. The fee is $5 per year, which covers about 5,000 posts, 2,500 reactions, and 2,500 followers. It’s a low entrance cost to prevent bot and spam accounts that frequently plague typical social media platforms. 

Furthermore, this isn’t entirely for profit either as these fees go towards covering transaction fees, credit card processing, etc.; clients built on the protocol such as Warpcast have the flexibility to charge their own fees, with Warpcast posts costing $0.01 alongside a set of reward mechanisms that allow for free posts.

The introduction of Frames changed the trajectory of Farcaster forever and is proving to be an innovation that has captured the hearts and minds of the crypto community. 

Warpcast and frames

On 26 January 2024, Frames were launched on Warpcast. Frames allow users to transcend Web2 boundaries by letting them interact with external links without needing to leave the Warpcast app. Though it seems overtly simple, it’s a revolutionary move that opens up Farcaster to a world of potential. 

It turns Farcaster-based posts into what are essentially mini-apps with native monetization features, allowing users to play games, create polls, vote, trade and purchase crypto, mint NFTs such as Bitcoin Ordinals, shop, browse podcasts, and much more directly from the social feed. 

It’s a leap in functionality that is expected to provide huge benefits to developers, content creators, and the user experience overall. Seemingly, the sky is the limit for Frames. 

Farcaster on-chain metrics

The introduction of Frames saw on-chain metrics for Farcaster explode, with daily active users (DAUs) now exceeding 30,000, up 1,400% in the days that followed.

Furthermore, protocol daily protocol revenue has also jumped in line with this influx of new users, averaging over $600,000 at the time of writing.