As a top project in the current SocialFi track cycle, Farcaster has been widely watched, and The Blockbeats article on Farcaster protocol integration has been out for a month.

As a nascent Web3 social protocol, Farcaster stands out from Web2 products with many distinctive features, making it somewhat challenging to grasp. This article will provide a detailed explanation in a Q&A format of everything a novice user needs to know, taking you through Farcaster & Warpcast.

An Introduction to Farcaster & Warpcast

Q: What is the relationship between Farcaster and Warpcast?

A: Farcaster is a protocol, which is open and neutral. Warpcast is the official client launched by the Farcaster team, and there are many startup teams in the market that have launched clients, including Takocast, Recaster, and so on. There are also many other software applications that have integrated some features of Farcaster, such as The Block App.

In relation to Warpcast, Farcaster is like the email protocol to Gmail.

In relation to The Block, Farcaster is like the email protocol to software that allows login with an email address.

Q: What is the founding team of Farcaster like?

A: Farcaster was born from two former Coinbase executives, Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, who began collaborating in 2020 and proposed an idea called RSS+.

Varun Srinivasan grew up in India, studied at Carnegie Mellon University, founded SoundFocus to help people with hearing loss, worked at Microsoft, and later served as a director at Coinbase, where he spent four years building the engineering team and developing products. Dan Romero, who also worked at Coinbase, was previously an angel investor in dozens of early-stage tech companies.

Q: Why is the social atmosphere in Warpcast so good?

A: Unlike many crypto startup teams, the two founders of Farcaster were already financially independent due to stock accumulated from previous work. Their motivation for starting another venture was to build high-quality social protocols in the crypto world for long-term development, with money and short-term gains likely lower on their priority list.

Besides personal motivation, community governance is also crucial, and founder Dan Romero played a significant role in this regard—almost the first 1000 users of Warpcast came through Dan Romero's 1v1 evangelism on Twitter, including Ethereum founder Vitalik, and Base founder Jesse Pollak, among others. Many tech enthusiasts grew tired of the volatile atmosphere of Crypto Twitter and view Warpcast as their cozy corner to gather.

Some have commented: Farcaster is a decentralized open protocol, while Warpcast is a centrally operated application—the tension inherent in this contradiction has shaped the unique Farcaster & Warpcast we see today.

Q: What is the current status of the Farcaster protocol?

A: In May 2024, the Farcaster team secured a $150 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm. As of August 27th, the Farcaster protocol has around 650,000 users, with a daily active user ratio of about 1/10, generating approximately 750 ETH in total revenue. The network stores about 150 GB of all information and has 20,000 off-chain data storage nodes.

For more detailed data, see:

"Where to Find Farcaster Related Data?"

Q: Why is there a fee to register for Farcaster?

A: To purchase 1 unit of storage unit and to have your identity on-chain.

Q: What does 1 unit of storage unit mean?

A: The annual rental cost of 1 unit of storage unit is approximately 3 USD, allowing you to post 5000 casts, follow 2500 people, and engage 2500 times.

Please note: After the storage unit expires, you need to purchase more storage space within a 30-day grace period, otherwise the system will start deleting from the earliest expired posts.

Q: What does having your identity on-chain mean?

A: Unlike a purely peer-to-peer social protocol like Nostr where all data is on-chain, or an almost centralized social app like Friend.tech, Farcaster is somewhere in between—enabling users to have their identity data on-chain while storing other data off-chain.

Identity information includes:

(1) FID: FID is unique, decentralized and stored on-chain, unchangeable by anyone, provided in the order of registration.

(2) Farcaster Names (fnames): Usernames are centrally stored, managed by the official team, unique to each user, can be changed once a week, or ENS names can be used instead.

Warpcast Feature Introduction

Q: What are Wraps?

A: Warps in Warpcast are similar to Q coins in QQ, with one Warp stable at 0.01 USD, used for tipping, minting certain NFTs within Warpcast, connecting to other Farcaster APPs, and helping friends pay for Farcaster registration fees.

Q: What does "Connect to another Farcaster APP" mean?

A: Farcaster allows developers to create different types of applications based on the protocol, where different clients can interact with each other. Each client has its own independent user system and potential airdrop expectations.

For example, BlockBeats from Dapp.com has fully integrated its user system with the Farcaster protocol. Readers can choose to use the Farcaster protocol to log in to the BlockBeats APP and then can comment on and share content. These interactions will also be reflected in their own Farcaster account. Currently, BlockBeats has partnered with JoJo, a decentralized exchange platform on Base, to launch the first airdrop.

Details at:

"BlockBeats Fully Integrates Farcaster Protocol, Bringing a New Web3 Content Platform Experience"

"Base Ecosystem DEX JOJO Announces Joint Airdrop Event with BlockBeats"

Q: What is a cast?

A: In Warpcast, a cast is similar to X's tweet, where you can choose to post it on your homepage (Home) or in the corresponding channel (Channel).

In addition, casts offer other features: Frame and Action are two functions pioneered by Warpcast that will definitely catch your eye.

Q: What are Frames?

A: Frames enable interactive experiences to be created on Farcaster, similar to WeChat mini-programs. Frames can embed this mini-program-like experience into the daily cast flow. Developers are free to create Frames.

Frame is a product design that has dazzled the web2 world. For more information, see:

《A Comprehensive Understanding of Hot Innovations in Frames on the Farcaster Protocol》

《From the Perspective of Web2, How Important Are Farcaster's New Feature Frames?》

《Exploring Farcaster's New Feature Frames: Activating New Social Play and Turning Tweets into Interactive Apps》

Q: What are Actions?

A: Actions allow developers to create custom buttons that users can install, similar to browser extensions, but geared towards casting. Developers are free to create Actions.

Q: What is an Alt-Client?

A: Similar to the relationship between Bitcoin and Altcoin, currently, other Farcaster clients are considered Alt-Clients compared to Warpcast.

Just as Altcoin has solved many problems that BTC couldn't solve, Alt-Clients can also solve many problems that Warpcast can't solve. For example, Takocast makes the Farcaster ecosystem more user-friendly for Chinese users, Recaster facilitates multi-account login, allows followers to be categorized, and enables scheduled cast releases, and more.

Q: Which Frames, Actions, and Alt-Clients are fun?

A: The community is constantly creating new Frames, Actions, and Alt-Clients based on the Farcaster underlying protocol.

The Warpcast web version's Home page displays people's discussions on the current hottest Frames, as well as channels dedicated to Frames discussion and Actions discussion.

There are also some handy aggregation websites: for example, the Frames Ranking launched by the Airstack team and the user-initiated project aggregation website Farcaster Aggregation.

On the mobile side, you can also see officially recommended Frames, Actions, and some APPs that have integrated Farcaster:

Additional Details on Warpcast Usage

Q: Are there any limitations to casting?

A: You can cast up to 1024 characters, but any characters after 320 will be truncated.

Q: What is the address of my Farcaster account? Do I own the private key? Can the address be changed?

A: Only on the mobile side can you view your private key or change your address. As shown in the image, you can view the mnemonic used to recover your account or choose to change it.

Q: How can I avoid seeing specific content?

A: As shown in the settings menu, select banned words so that content containing those words can be blocked.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia