Narratives for next bull market
The shitcoin casino of 2024 is almost upon us, but how will the narrative present itself? From what I can tell there are four very big ones on the horizon:
- AI
- DEX
- Gaming
- WEB3 Social
AI will definitely have the most hype while simultaneously being the most hollow. Many undeliverable promises will be guaranteed, just like "Metaverse" in years past. The most important one will be DEX tech. Our liquidity has been cut off and we need to rebuild it in a robust manner that can't be shut down by regulators. Crypto gaming is a huge untapped market that hasn't quite been figured out, but it has unlimited potential. But today we focus on a shiny new thing in the social media realm.
Initial outlook for Warpcast
Much like NOSTR, Friend.Tech, Stars Arena, and potentially Blue Sky, I expect Farcaster to be an abysmal failure. But as 
None of these platforms are in competition with each other, no matter how hard they try to project that message within the marketing campaign. It is not possible to gatekeep open source code, and if it's not open source then it isn't even web3 and we don't have to worry about it. I'd be shocked if one of these platforms had a really good idea and brought it to life while simultaneously being unclonable to our own network. And even in that case we'd learn a lot about our own limitations.
Creating an account
So a week or two ago I finally summoned the energy to try this protocol out for myself. I read an article on it but these articles tell us absolutely nothing.
At its core, Farcaster runs on the robust Optimism blockchain infrastructure, ensuring transparency, security, and decentralization.
Interoperability: One of Farcaster's standout features is its focus on interoperability. It is designed to seamlessly interact with other blockchain networks, enabling a fluid exchange of information and assets across different platforms. This enables multiple social media dapps to be built atop the Farcster protocol, such as the popular Warpcast, a Twitter-like platform.
Statements like this are incredibly suspect.
The claim is that it's interoperable with other blockchains, and yet it lists zero other blockchains that it's interoperable with. It then cites an example of the main app Warpcast that's built directly on the original blockchain. That's not a new thing that's just apps built on a blockchain; aka basic web3 principals.
Farcaster utilizes smart contracts to govern interactions within the network, from posting content to social engagements.
On-chain smart contracts
As we all know on Hive this can and will lead to either centralization or severe network bloat, but you never know maybe they come up with some 'innovative' solutions to the scaling problem.
Farcaster's journey from concept to development underscores a growing interest in decentralized digital communities, kickstarted by Elon Musk's acquisition of social media platform Twitter in 2022.
Wait sorry it was kickstarted by Elon Musk?
Or was it kickstarted by the hate of Elon Musk taking over Twitter?
Speak sense please.
Truly, none of this is new or interesting for anyone on Hive.
Except of course for the $5 sign-up fee that makes it obviously not decentralized. Like I said we get through this entire 800 word article on the product and basically learn nothing, so I decided I needed to make an account and see for myself.
www.warpcast.com
We go website and right off the bat find out this thing isn't even accessible through a browser. It's only an app on a phone... through the two main centralized stores. Just red flag after red flag.
But to be fair to Farcaster, Warpcast is just one app built atop the chain. It's a very similar concept to the relationship of Steem vs Steemit. Steem was the blockchain but Steemit was the forward facing app that everybody used. It was very easy to confuse the two as the exact same product; the names are very similar. At least Warpcast doesn't have this problem, although it does suffer from being the only option currently so the concept is difficult for newbies to grasp. Regardless, just because Warpcast may or may not be shit doesn't really have any bearing on the underlying tech stack.
So I begrudgingly download the app
- It wants me to write down my 12-word seed (cool beans).
- It wants me to give them an email address.
- I give them my non-doxed crypto email.
- Now it wants me to give them a phone number.
And that's where they lost me.
Like, no. I don't want to give you a phone number. Fuck off. That is not how web3 works. Apparently this is all part of the plan to mitigate bots. You can opt to not give them a phone number and they demand you pay them the $5 that the article talked about. I believe this is a yearly fee for "operation fees". Which, don't get me wrong, is a very cheap yearly fee for infinite bandwidth on a blockchain. Probably even competitive with Hive itself. The problem is that both options dox my identity right at the beginning of the sign up process and I simply refuse to participate in that type of nonsense. That's not what I'm here for.
This situation forces me to ask questions like: why do they want my email address? Are they going to allow me to recover my account through email? Does this mean they have access to my seed and failed to mention that little detail in the signup process? It's just all suspect and requires more research than I'm willing to put in at the moment.
If Farcaster gets more hype and everyone on crypto twitter is talking about it like they were with Friend.Tech and Stars Arena, then I'll bite the bullet and start over from the beginning. I'll give them a doxed email and my real phone number and some random username that I won't tell anyone about so I can check it out. Until then, no deal. Not interested.
Doing some extra homework.
This thing is built on the "Optimism blockchain"?
What is that?
Well, that's ironic.
Yeah you'd have to be pretty optimistic to think you could build a social media website with EVM; I'll give them that much.
Best thing about it is the brand name.
When I hear the word Farcaster, I'm interested.
I type it into google and what do I get?
Not only does the actual protocol get the top spot on a basic search, but also we see that it's a reference to an extremely popular science fiction setting. It's basically faster than light (FTL) travel through a portal that folds space. So I mean right off the bat it's pretty much a way better brand name than something like Steem or Hive, so they've got that going for them.
It's also got EVM, which will inevitably be its downfall but will also be the reason a ton of money and adoption pour into it temporarily. Everyone knows how to use EVM and there are more EVM devs in the world than any other crypto network. Also EVM has the most liquidity. There's a reason why people choose it, and being the best scalable & sustainable option isn't one of them.
Conclusion
Well we did all this work and we learned absolutely nothing. Fun stuff. Farcaster is littered with red flags, but I'm still willing to admit there could be something interesting brewing here. My only question is: can I make money there? Because if I can I'm game to earn some shekels if only to cash it out to Bitcoin and Hive. I guess we'll find out next time.