By Sukanya Ganesh — Jan 16, 2023

🤳 A Decentralized Social Network

Explaining Farcaster's network

Today's Highlights

Farcaster - email for web3

Blockchain events - upcoming events in the blockchain world.

In Other News - a few interesting developments we're tracking.

Farcaster - email for web3

Farcaster is a fully decentralized social network. It is an open protocol that supports many clients, similar to mailboxes. Users can freely migrate social identities between applications, and developers can freely build applications with new features on the network. On Farcaster, users can send short text message broadcasts that connect to their Ethereum address. Verifying address ownership enables a range of features, including showcasing the user’s NFT, using the NFT as a verified avatar, and more. Farcaster is a social network with “vital interests.”

On the Farcaster Network, anyone can build client applications to broadcast messages. The official tutorial has been released to guide the user to build a simple application to read messages from any user. They are also building the first client application to make it easy for users to get started, which is currently in beta.

There are several applications built on this protocol. In Instacaster all images built on top of Farcaster are posted here. Through Searchcaster any cast on the platform can be searched. In Configcaster a user uses a “connected wallet” for an app/website, their configuration is automatically imported, and the app can request any sensitive data and be approved by the user with one click.

The Farcaster protocol is divided into two important parts: an on-chain registry for users to receive unique usernames; and an off-chain host for users to store social data. The registry is a smart contract that allows Farcaster users to easily find each other, which is important because Farcaster’s architecture dictates that user data may be spread across different servers. Users must generate a new Ethereum address and claim a unique username such as @alice by broadcasting a transaction to the registry. The username must also be associated with a valid host URL, such as https://alice.com/host, where the user data will be stored.

Dan Romero is the founder of Farcaster. Farcaster has raised a total of $30M in funding.