In this episode of The Slow Hunch, I spoke with Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, the co-founders of Farcaster. Farcaster is a social app and protocol that is open, programmable, and crypto-native.
Before starting Farcaster, both Dan and Varun spent a few years at Coinbase. That experience deeply shaped their perspective on crypto infrastructure, user behavior, and what it takes to build a “sufficiently decentralized” experience at scale.
In this conversation we trace their slow hunch: the idea that social networks needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, as decentralized protocols with credible neutrality, shared state, and a design space open to builders.
We talked about what they got wrong early on (too much focus on architecture, not enough on user acquisition), how crypto enables new interaction primitives like tipping and token-based identity, and why open programmability (not just ideology) is Farcaster’s biggest edge.
Hope you enjoy!
Chapters:
- 00:00:00 Cold open
- 00:02:20 What makes Farcaster different
- 00:06:45 Early crypto days at Coinbase
- 00:10:30 Discovering a shared vision for decentralized protocols
- 00:16:07 Why the infrastructure is ready now
- 00:20:55 The social landscape in 2020: Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky
- 00:23:00 Elon acquires Twitter, FTX, and the narrative shift in decentralized social
- 00:24:53 Designing for "sufficient decentralization"
- 00:29:26 Why the obsession over pure decentralization is a distraction
- 00:32:05 The Farcaster launch story - how they got their first users
- 00:34:30 Why social protocols take time to grow
- 00:36:28 Inventing new content primitives instead of choosing political sides
- 00:41:00 What crypto rails enable: Wallets, tipping, and programmable social UX
- 00:42:38 Reframing money as social interaction
- 00:43:56 Why crypto feels contrarian
- 00:45:59 Crypto as the last frontier of indie building
- 00:47:01 AI vs crypto as platforms for small creators
- 00:49:40 Hiding vs embracing crypto in UX
- 00:50:55 Dan and Varun’s evolving view on abstracting away the chain
- 00:54:00 The adjacent possible: mini-apps, embedded wallets, AI video
- 00:59:00 Using AI to surface context + trending content
- 01:00:54 What big platforms won’t do: programmable money
- 01:03:57 Crowdsourced Q&A – early Farcaster days
- 01:06:53 Why mobile UX is everything
- 01:07:00 The surprising difficulty of building other clients
- 01:08:43 Varun on shifting from text to video
- 01:13:00 Why they cut encrypted messaging
- 01:15:00 Closing thoughts
