Dan Romero, co-founder of Farcaster and a former Coinbase veteran, dives into the exciting realm of decentralized social networking. He discusses how Farcaster’s new feature, Frames, has skyrocketed user engagement, expanding their base tenfold. Romero shares insights on minimizing crypto complexity for users, the promise of 3D social experiences with Apple’s Vision Pro, and the challenges of creating a billion-user platform. He also elaborates on the platform's unique architecture that empowers creators while ensuring user control and security.
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insights INSIGHT
Farcaster's Goals
Farcaster aims to solve two problems: enabling developer freedom and empowering creators.
It uses blockchain minimally for user identity, prioritizing ease of onboarding over full decentralization.
insights INSIGHT
Minimal Blockchain Use
Farcaster prioritizes user onboarding, making it feel like Web2 while using blockchain in the background.
Only registration records are stored on-chain, enabling off-chain interactions for a smoother experience.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Username Squatting
Laura Shin filled out a form to claim the "Unchained" username on Farcaster.
Farcaster uses F names (centralized) and ENS (decentralized) for usernames, offering flexibility.
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Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze
Laura Shin
The Cryptopians delves into the story of idealists, technologists, and opportunists fighting to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. The book focuses on the founding of Ethereum by Vitalik Buterin and the subsequent crypto fever it created. It introduces readers to larger-than-life characters such as Buterin, Charles Hoskinson, and Joe Lubin, highlighting the personal and professional conflicts that shaped the early days of Ethereum. The narrative explores the booms, busts, and internecine wars within the crypto world, revealing it as a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.
Hyperion
Dan Simmons
In 'Hyperion', Dan Simmons crafts a complex and engaging narrative that follows seven pilgrims as they travel to the enigmatic planet Hyperion. Each pilgrim has a unique story to tell, which they share during their journey, revealing their connections to Hyperion and the Shrike, a metallic creature with the power to grant wishes. The novel is structured similarly to 'The Canterbury Tales' by Geoffrey Chaucer, with a framing narrative that presents the tales of the pilgrims. The story explores themes of religion, war, love, and the human condition, set against a backdrop of interstellar politics and technological advancements. The novel is praised for its detailed world-building, character development, and literary references[1][2][5].
In the two weeks since Farcaster introduced its Frames feature that allows developers to easily add mini apps to users’ posts, the decentralized social network has become the talk of Twitter, now X, and increased its user base by ten times, according to co-founder Dan Romero.
Romero joins Unchained to discuss why Frames has become so popular, the philosophy behind Farcaster and its client Warpcast, why the crypto component behind Farcaster is being kept to a minimum, how Apple’s new Vision Pro could lead to the creation of a 3D social network on Farcaster, how he and his fellow co-founder’s background at Coinbase helped shape their decisions about building Farcaster, and his vision for eventually getting Farcaster to a billion-plus users.
Show highlights:
What Farcaster is and what problems it’s trying to solve
How and why Farcaster uses blockchain technology in the background
How you can use ENS (Ethereum Name Services) for your handles on Farcaster
How the recovery of accounts works on Farcaster and what the security implications are
What Frames is and why it’s significant for developers and creators
What’s controlled by the protocol vs. the client
What Dan imagines could be built with the new Apple Vision Pro
Whether there’s potential for better economics and ways to monetize content in Farcaster
Why Farcaster is on Optimism, an Ethereum Layer 2, and whether it could be moved to another network
How they are working to build a more decentralized network
What the future of Farcaster and Frames could look like
How Dan’s background at Coinbase shaped the way in which he decided to build Farcaster
What the strategy is for scaling the platform to the numbers more associated with Web2 social media
Unchained 
