Ep: 120: 1) Farcaster, Frames and Feelings with Dan Romero, co-founder of Farcaster 2) Crypto The Game

[00:00] I got a real Emma Chamberlain vibe going on, like in my bed, shooting my podcast. Just the budget version, though, I have to say. No shade, of course. We share the same budget. [00:13] Welcome to the Feelings Check-In, a feelings first look at the news of the week. Takes no one asked for on topics everyone's talking about. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. The Boys Club podcast? No. [00:30] Now. [00:30] Just boy stuff. [00:32] Guess what? Boys Club is doing our very first conference called Brand New. Dina, what are we going to be talking about? So we're going to be covering a lot of the stuff that we cover on this podcast. Crypto, of course, the new internet, digital culture, emerging technology. We'll be at the Austin proper on March 12th. And we're pulling in some of the smartest people we know. It's going to be very fun. Tickets are now live and they will never be as cheap as they are right now. [01:02] today, go buy your ticket. Members and zaddy holders get special pricing. And if you aren't a member, you can apply to attend brand new. So go to boysclub.vip backslash brand new link and show notes to get all the details and can't wait to see you in Austin. Yeehaw! [01:19] Hi. Hey. How's it going? Good. [01:22] Cool pod. [01:24] Cool pod today. [01:25] It's the cool kids pod today. [01:28] there was um

[01:30] So we're going to talk about crypto, the game in today's pod. [01:35] as well as talk about, we had Dan Romero from Farkaster.com. [01:39] co-founder of ourcaster on the podcast big yet i have to say [01:43] Yeah. [01:44] Big get on a big week for us to get Dan. Big week for Dan. So big get for us that he found the time for boys club podcast. But one small anecdote is we'll talk about cryptic of the game and the mechanics in it. But basically we have to solve a puzzle today. And anyway, one of the answers that someone in my group was trying to thought of for the puzzle that was today's puzzle was Brooklyn's Farcaster Elite. [02:14] but it ties today's guests and topics together neatly. Wow, I love that. So for the listener, what we are doing here today is we bring on Dan Romero, the founder of Farcaster, which is a decentralized social network. To put it very, very simply, it's many things to many people. And it had a big week with a new launch that took over the timeline and took over my crypto internet for sure. [02:44] our feelings about playing a crypto game appropriately named crypto the game. And it's been episode I will say about Dan, I really love. [02:55] hearing from and talking to a founder who is honest about what it's like to be a founder, which is that it's really, really, really hard. Yeah. And that every day you wake up,

[03:04] working to push a boulder up a hill. And it's really nice to have that recognized by someone who is very successful and is really crushing it and very much someone who could have a different attitude towards the work and present in a different kind of way. And it was really nice and refreshing to have someone come on and, and honestly, I'm, [03:24] He's pretty comfortable with his feelings. I thought he wouldn't be able to get there. He was pretty comfortable with his feelings. And he shared some feelings. We had a feelings check-in with Dan. Yeah, I think also he's super pragmatic. And he said many times, [03:37] We're not out of the woods yet, which he is... [03:41] a successful dude and speaking to your own success as like being kind of a work in progress, I think is cool. [03:46] Very cool. Boys club is doing some fun stuff on Farcaster, or we will be doing some fun stuff on Farcaster soon. So if you're not following us there, do that. [03:57] Because you won't want to miss out. [03:59] Right, Dina? Yeah. I mean, I'm literally in a Telegram chat right now with a... [04:05] developer that we found on Farcaster and some other folks to try and bring this experiment over the finish line. So I don't want to commit to anything just yet. We're not committing. We're just teasing. Suggesting. We're... [04:20] Just mentioning, maybe. [04:23] So hopefully you'll see some stuff there. If not, you'll see some very funny stories. [04:28] Casts? [04:29] Is that what they're called there? [04:31] Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, we're there. So you should come hang out with us there. Yeah. No matter what. At Boys Club. And then there's a Boys Club channel on Farcaster, too. So you can always jump into that, too. Wow. This is a messy intro. OK. Enjoy the show.

[04:44] Hey, Natasha, what is crypto to you? Crypto is so much more than charts and gains. It's a whole new financial system. Entirely new technological rails to enable creativity, ownership, wealth building and more. [05:01] friendly bridge to this whole new world. Everything can be better. So why not finance? To get started, go to kraken.com backslash boys club, sign up in just a few minutes and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Cryptocurrency services are provided to US and US territory customers by Payward Ventures Incorporated, PBI, DBA, Kraken. On today's podcast, we have Daniel Romero, co-founder of Farcaster. Dan, welcome to the show. [05:28] Thanks for having me. [05:29] I'm really excited to have you for a myriad of reasons, but one of them is I have some just core questions about Farcaster that I probably could have Googled, but we're here now. [05:42] I'm like a chat GPT for Farcaster, so you can ask me whatever and I'll give you an answer. Hopefully I won't hallucinate. [05:48] Perfect. Perfect. So we're going to start with some really basic questions. I want to get into what's happening with frames and definitely dig into all the energy that's around that, which is super exciting. But I want to just level set for our listeners, give them a lay of the land. So if you could start with, you know, what is Farcaster? What's sort of the difference between Farcaster and Warpcaster? And we can start there. Great. So Farcaster itself is a decentralized social network. But [06:12] I like to say that that doesn't matter to consumers. They're like, "Okay, what does that do for me?" But I think there are two audiences that really get that once you explain it, is developers.

[06:22] Developers, if they build something on Farcaster and they get users, that's a relationship that they have directly. They can't have that run, right, to use a crypto term. [06:30] And same thing with creators, right? [06:33] If you're a big creator, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, pick your favorite. [06:37] Um, [06:38] for whatever reason, doesn't have to just be some kind of crazy political thing. [06:42] Those platforms can just [06:43] Yank your account, you don't get a chance to export your audience. And that's actually pretty impactful if that's your business. [06:51] And so on a network that is decentralized, that can't happen. And so developers, creators, they like the decentralized social network, but [06:59] Average consumer, right? Maybe you're not a creator, maybe you're not a developer. You're like, why should I care about Farcaster? So, [07:05] I think the simplest description of Farcaster is it's a social network. [07:09] that has some vibes of Twitter, actually a lot of vibes of Twitter mixed with Reddit. [07:14] right so the the specificity of subreddits so if you have whatever interest gardening f1 [07:20] you know, longevity, [07:23] There's a sub-community on Farcaster that you can find, and you can kind of find your tribe. That's the term we're trying from the marketing standpoint. We're not so good at marketing. We're engineers, but I think one big push in 2024 is to make it much more relatable to normal people. [07:41] And so I think coming up with the pitch for why would you even care about Farcaster? [07:47] is something that we're still working on but i would say that if you're kind of the average person at home you use twitter

[07:52] You've maybe used Reddit, maybe used TikTok. Forecaster is going to be a place that if you have a set of interests, you're actually going to find communities and kind of thoughtful internet strangers, basically, all over the world who are interested in the same things you are. [08:04] And, um, [08:05] So it's actually in a way, I don't know if you guys kind of were on early Facebook era, [08:10] That's kind of how early Facebook felt. Like, yeah, you were kind of associated with the school, but you click on all these different interests and then find everyone else who had interests similar to you. And it was kind of like this way to... [08:21] to find other like-minded people. [08:23] Um, whereas I think social media in 2024 is a little bit more like these huge monolithic things. You, you sign up for Twitter and start tweeting. It's like, [08:32] yelling into the void. And so I think for the average person, it's actually a great way to just meet people who have similar interests to you. [08:40] and [08:41] Yeah, that's what I would say. And then I'm happy to talk about all the technical stuff that happens underneath to make it all work. But that's the workshopping pitch of what Farpcaster is. I like that a lot. And it's really, really interesting to hear you talking about it. Because all of a sudden, the experience of Warpcaster and having the different channels, which is a big part of the user experience, suddenly starts to make a lot of sense in terms of how you're thinking about that value to the consumer being an interest graph. [09:08] that has social elements as a fundamental part of it, which I think Reddit as an interest graph is very clear and very obvious, but you don't have that social element in Reddit. At least I'm not friending people in Reddit and talking to them. I know that that capability is there, but I have no interest in doing that. But I think having that

[09:25] be sort of the sort of marriage of the two at Farcaster. That makes a ton of sense. And honestly, it maps to my experience of Farcaster of using it so far. So I think that [09:35] And insofar as you're doing your marketing this in 2024, thinking about the everyday consumer, I think that that definitely tracks. [09:42] It's actually a brilliant encapsulation, by the way, of Reddit. So Reddit has the depth of interest. Like you can find any weird community on there. And it's like 100,000 people. You're like, wait, there are 100,000 people who have this like weird interest? [09:54] But Reddit, [09:56] in how its UI is, how kind of it feels, it's actually very pseudonymous, right? Like everyone, you can't put a profile photo. There's no real, like the thing that Twitter really nails is [10:07] you can build an audience and identity. Even if you're not like a professional creator, it's like, no, no, it's like, oh, I'm Natasha. Here's my Twitter profile. And like, this is my vibe. And [10:17] find people, [10:18] on Twitter. [10:19] but they don't find interest on Twitter. And then I think on Reddit, they find interest, but they don't find people. And so the goal, and we're not out of the woods yet, but it's very much is, can we blend the best of both, right? And I also think the other two things to think about is, [10:32] Twitter works really well on mobile, right? Just like Instagram, it's like feed oriented, you can do scroll all the things that, you know, people say they don't want to do, but they do. [10:42] Reddit is actually a lot harder to use on mobile. Like I think if you talk to most people who are really into Reddit, [10:47] they use it on their computer because it's like this nested reply thing and it like feels like you actually want all of the information there. [10:54] And I think that the reality is

[10:56] and we see this in our own data, 85% of usage of farcasters on mobile. [11:01] And Twitter has put out numbers. So as Instagram, it's like, I think Twitter's 88% use on mobile Instagram, you know, that it basically don't even have a web client. So it's like 90, 90 plus percent. And so I think that is the potential opportunity for us is if can we build the thing that blends the kind of like mobile polish of something like Twitter with the feed? [11:22] with that interest depth of Reddit. [11:24] And that's new, right? We didn't set out to do that. It's like we've kind of been navigating how to figure this out. And so very much like, [11:30] That is a new thing in the last six months. And it's very much a focus this year is like, [11:34] make this thing relatable to normal people. [11:36] because they don't care about the decentralization. [11:38] They just care about being entertained. Right. I like to say that social networks kind of do one of two things for people. [11:44] They're either entertainment. So people claim that they're on Twitter to learn and news and whatever. The reality is entertainment. You can also do that while learning. [11:52] And then I think there's a second thing with social networks is people want to meet other people, usually if they're younger and they want to date and then, you know, [11:59] whatever happens after that. But like, those are the two primary reasons people use social networks like that. And so, [12:05] Um, [12:06] We need to improve the entertainment value. [12:10] And in doing so, I think that the best way to do that is like make this the most entertaining mobile social network. [12:17] that has depth of interest. And so, like I said, if you're really into gardening and F1 racing, [12:23] You can actually mesh those communities together, at least in your feed on Farcaster. Cool. That is interesting that you're saying that that's a sort of newer revelation for you guys or something that you've started to build out because one of the experiences that I think Dina and I have had about six months ago when there were all of these decentralized sort of.

[12:41] Twitter versions popping up. You know, it was like Blue Sky and it was you guys. And we were sort of playing around with all of these. And the main thing that we kept feeling is why would I come here as opposed to Twitter? And as a lot of what we do as content creation, as a creator, like what's the unique asset that you're putting here that feels different than what you would post on a Twitter or something like that? And I think the lists aspect of it is such a fresh and really adds a lot of depth to what you guys are doing and what differentiates you against maybe a Twitter or something like that. I'm curious, just what is... [13:11] the warpcaster of it all. [13:12] Yeah, so the way to think about Farcaster, to get a little bit more into the technical, when I say decentralized, I think the analogy I always like to use for people because they use it every day is email. So if I say, send me an email. [13:24] you don't have to worry about like, do you use Yahoo email? Do you still use AOL? Like do you use Gmail? Do you use G Suite? Do you have to send it because you work on a Windows machine, Microsoft Outlook? [13:34] No one gets confused on that. [13:36] Because average person, whether they know it or not, they understand that email is this kind of universal thing. It's a protocol. They might not even know the term protocol. [13:45] And that Gmail is a specific app that plugs into this overall system, right? And I can use my Gmail at home to send it to my work email on Microsoft and just works, right? [13:55] And so that is the analogy that I use to try to describe why a decentralized system works pretty well in that... [14:03] There's actually competition for email clients, right? Most people in the US use Gmail, but for the most part, like if you really wanted to be hardcore and run your own email, or this is even better for creators, like Substack allows you to be a newsletter versus MailChimp, and you can port those between and it all works.

[14:18] Um, that's, that's how to think about Warpcast, our app, our Gmail. [14:24] and Farrcaster, [14:25] the protocol like email. [14:28] So they kind of sit on top of each other. And another good example, if, you know, crypto kind of [14:33] native type people would understand is [14:36] There's Ethereum. [14:38] Then you have wallets on top. You have MetaMask, you have Rainbow, you have Coinbase wallet. [14:42] So that's basically Warpcast. And it's a little confusing, honestly. We've had some feedback from... [14:48] Some very old time, very successful people in Silicon Valley are like, [14:54] Why don't you just call it Farcaster, Farcaster, and then other people can build clients. I think we got a little galaxy-brained because we were like, [15:00] "Oh, well, we want it to be clean so that there's the protocol and everything has its own name." [15:05] But if I was to give myself a rating on that, it was like, [15:09] Shouldn't have done that. Should just kept it simple. It just been like, Farcaster, sign up, get it. And then like, oh, there are other apps in the ecosystem, right? [15:15] But this is part of the stuff that you kind of learn. Like, you know, I've been in crypto 10 years. I used to work at Coinbase. [15:20] And so I think I got a little overeager on like try to win over the decentralized ideological people in crypto. [15:27] When I think the reality and, and, you know, hard, hard, because it's like, we've gone down this path, so you can't run the counterfactual. But I think like, [15:35] keeping things simpler and just like easier value proposition [15:40] If we haven't done that to date, that is the theme in 2024. It is just like, don't talk in jargon, really focus on what is this going to provide for me and how is that...

[15:49] you know, like fulfilling a need, right? Because ultimately consumers [15:53] They have time is zero sum. Like you literally anytime you're spending time on one thing you could be spending on another. [15:58] And if your app is not [16:00] Entertaining. [16:02] you'll just watch Netflix or switch over to Twitter. And the one thing I want to bring up, which you brought up, and this is the existential problem that we have to solve, [16:11] is [16:12] Creator, you have an audience on Twitter. You are making progress building an audience on Twitter. [16:19] We aren't going to beat Twitter on a number of users anytime soon. [16:23] So if all we're offering is something that feels really close to Twitter, [16:28] but with fewer people, it's a losing proposition. [16:31] And actually, to bring up just like last year, there was a lot with kind of the Elon stuff. It's like everyone's trying to create a Twitter competitor. [16:38] Facebook couldn't even create like a Twitter killer. And they had 100 million people because they pushed them all through Instagram. Is it just competing on the same thing? [16:47] is not a winning strategy and maybe facebook just because in their scale are going to be able to build it up but but i think [16:53] You have to build something different and you have to scratch a different itch for people. [16:56] And the challenge with consumers, [16:58] they're not going to be able to tell you that. They can use your product and be like, "Wow, this is amazing. I didn't know I wanted this." But like, [17:04] Pitching someone Instagram before Instagram existed, like they would have said, no, I don't want to do that. And then they use Instagram and they're like, this is amazing. And so that's the challenge with building consumer apps is, [17:14] you have to kind of like pull out [17:17] the behavior that is unaddressed and then actually build a great experience for them.

[17:22] And I think we've made progress, but we have definitely not gotten out of the woods yet. [17:27] And I think the thing I would want to talk to you today about is frames because [17:30] Frames for us is the first time we've launched something, [17:34] That feels fundamentally different than Twitter. We're not just a Twitter clone anymore. [17:38] And so that's what's exciting. And that's why we have all this kind of buzz on Forecaster this week is it's the first time people are looking at this, oh, this could actually be different. It's not just Twitter Twitter. [17:47] on a blockchain, which it's not even on the blockchain, a very small bit. But like the whole point is, is like we're finally finding a [17:54] our own version of ourself. And so I'm happy to talk about that today. I definitely want to get into that. I do feel like we've all in the crypto industry have been waiting to see what... [18:04] will be the thing that makes any of these decentralized social media experiments [18:08] different and distinct than what the centralized or traditional social media networks look like. And I do think that Frames is a really, really exciting step. And we've already been having so much fun with Frames. Before we get into Frames, I do want to just push on one thing, which you were talking about before, which is about how creators are... [18:28] a target audience for you. I suppose someone that you think that you have a unique value prop for, and I agree. I do. One thing that always comes up for me is, [18:37] is just around creators' [18:40] targeting creators specifically and not having the distribution that those creators need in order to have a business or do their work. This is not unique to Farcaster. This is a cold start problem for any social network. But I'm curious how you're thinking about addressing it, especially as I do think that value prop for creators is very clear for decentralized social media. But it's just like, I don't know how you get that without that distribution. And so I'm wondering, I'm

[19:07] what your approach is and if you have any unique insight there. [19:10] Yeah, so it's very much a cold start problem in the sense that if you can get to a sufficient number of users, [19:16] then you can actually start to play around with those creator monetization primitives that I think Web3 Crypto, [19:23] can actually enable in a very unique and new, interesting way. [19:27] Um, [19:28] I can't give you the like, this is how to go do it. Like we just, it's like three years of like borrow and steal, like grind every, [19:34] week to try to get a few more people to stick around in the app. [19:38] And so that's where we kind of are, is we, especially coming into January, we were kind of at our biggest numbers ever for daily active users. That's the kind of metric. I wake up every day and I look at a chart of the number of people who use the app yesterday and then the day before. Just kind of see if that goes up. The industry vernacular is down. [19:55] So if you listen to a Facebook meta earnings call, they talk about time spent, which is even more aggressive. It's like literally how many minutes is the average user spend across all meta properties and then daily active users. [20:06] Um [20:07] And so that is, to me, the challenge of any of these social networks is, [20:13] you don't get credit for signups. Like, yeah, you can maybe get a bunch of people to sign up because it's like, oh, wow, there are all these people signing up. [20:20] But if no one comes back, the creator doesn't have an audience, doesn't get interaction, doesn't have the chance for monetization. So they'll churn. [20:26] And then the whole thing kind of falls apart. So I think for us, we've been really deliberate on just focusing on doubt, like wake up every day. And it stinks because it's like. [20:35] it'll go down. And then it's like, it's, it's demoralizing. Like, oh, come on. Like, why are people not wanting to use it? And so you just kind of have to keep pushing and pushing and

[20:44] Let's just be clear, like we've had amazing growth last like week and a half. [20:48] We're at 18,000 Dow. [20:51] which is a lot of people, if you think about it, like, you know, it's like starting to get to be like a stadium, like small, small stadium, like soccer stadium or something. But that's like nothing compared to Facebook or Twitter. So let's not give ourselves too much pat on the back. But I would say what's interesting is when you when you have 18,000 daily active users. [21:09] that I'll have a crypto wallet. [21:11] and may have some crypto because you focused on crypto natives at the beginning. [21:16] you start to actually have monetization happen way faster than Web2. [21:20] So if you think about how you monetize on something like YouTube on Web2, [21:24] Google's massive scale with YouTube. [21:27] They sell ads. [21:28] You don't have to do any work. They algorithmically sell it before your thing. And then based on the number of views, you get some cut, right? [21:35] Um, [21:36] But on Farcaster, we wouldn't be able to sell the ads. It's too small. You're just not going to be able to make enough money because we don't have that scale. [21:43] But creators who are building or putting NFTs on something like Zora, [21:48] we have a really nice mint flow right from the app. [21:52] And we've had people sell like, [21:55] 3000 basically free NFTs that they make a dollar and change per NFT. [22:01] And that's like, I've had people say, it's like, that's the most monetization I've had for my, you know, my arc period. Like, it's just like... [22:08] And but part of that is because [22:10] even though it's only 18,000 people using the app, it's the feed and it's natively kind of integrated. And now all of a sudden...

[22:16] it's a new type of monetization for the creator. So that's where that new functionality, that kind of like crypto native functionality that you try to make as seamless as possible and [22:26] Don't confuse people with like Wallet Connect and all these other kind of things that I think the average consumers [22:31] Just like tap a button mint from the feed. That feels pretty good. [22:34] And I think that is the stuff that will start to attract people to come over because it says, yeah, I'm not going to get as many... [22:41] clicks or views or likes as I'm going to get on Twitter. [22:45] But I actually make more money in like one thing on a smaller network that is actually crypto native. [22:52] Um, [22:53] than on traditional social media. That's how I think you win with creators. [22:57] is that they will follow where they can make money. [22:59] Like, it's not a bad thing. It's like, it's literally their livelihood. Like they're here because they want to be able to make more content and build. [23:06] So I very much envision a world where [23:09] While we're smaller, [23:10] people are going to actually use Twitter for top of funnel. And then it's like, [23:14] But my real friends follow me on Farcaster because they actually, they have a better economic relationship with them in a completely genuine and opt-in way. [23:22] I also think it tracks with two trends. One trend of, you know, you've seen sort of traditional media models die and people move towards these new models of, you know, Substack and Beehive and these ways of direct, more direct relationship. [23:37] especially as we're talking about creators, with their followers or with their subscribers, whatever it may be. And that being continuing to be the trend of quality over quantity, basically. But on social media, that hasn't translated in the same way.

[23:51] to direct monetization. And so I think that really tracks. And I also think when looking at creators, [23:57] in the same vein, they're trying to figure out [24:00] how do they find more direct relationships with their audience or fans that sort of cuts out the advertiser in a way where there's this really inauthentic relationship that so many... [24:11] influencers or creators have with their audiences at the end of the day, because they've had to monetize with these other ways. So I think if there's that more direct relationship, that does solve a real need for many creators. So I want to get into frames. And I think there will be many people who are listening who obviously have a ton of context for what's happening and are, you know, on there hacking things together and having a lot of fun. But there will be a lot of people who have no idea what we're talking about. So would love to just give if you give a one on one on what's happening with frames. Yeah. So let me use two analogies [24:41] from like web to social that I think most people [24:44] listening will know. So when you think of a tweet, [24:48] it's usually pretty static, right? It's like text, image, maybe a video. [24:52] People can... [24:53] Press the buttons at the bottom, like, you know, like retweet. You can dunk on it. [24:58] That's basically it, right? [25:00] There's one type of tweet that actually is interactive and it's a poll. [25:05] So you put a poll up, you as the tweet author get to decide, okay, what are the options? [25:11] that renders to the people [25:13] kind of viewing it who follow you as the option you click and then it like updates and shows you the account that's it so it's like very simple there's some interactivity that you have within the feed

[25:24] That's it. That's all you can do on Twitter that actually can get audience feedback outside of those other buttons that I talked about before. [25:31] Same thing, obviously, Instagram has with stories. They have a bunch of different little widgets that you can put, like, you know, the slider and all that kind of stuff. [25:38] Um, [25:39] The challenge with both of those things [25:42] is you, the creator, can do that. [25:45] But that's the only functionality that you can add into your [25:49] you know, creation, whether a story or a tweet, is defined by the company. [25:55] That does now exist on Farcaster in this kind of feed. [26:01] through this thing called frames, so these little tiny widgets that have basically an image and up to four buttons. That's it. This is not OpenAI. This is not Neuralink. It's like image and four buttons. But any developer can put any functionality they want and get as creative as they want within that very simple constraint. [26:22] And so we launched it a week ago. [26:23] It's actually not even a week ago. We launched a week ago tomorrow. So we were expecting some people to play around with it. We were not expecting to see how many people just went nuts in terms of all the expressivity. [26:33] And what was really cool about it is, I mean, it is an insanely simple set of things you can do, right? Like it is not that expressive. [26:42] But because it's completely permissionless, and we allow developers to do whatever they want, [26:47] We had the most creative implementations. Someone was able to get the video game Doom, which is a video game from the 90s,

[26:55] inside a thing that's only loading images with four buttons. It's not designed, it's not streaming, like there's no like magic, like, it's just the creativity, someone built a full game of chess. [27:04] And I think that the most exciting one was... [27:07] Um, [27:08] a group of three people put together a [27:11] like shopping cart for Girl Scout cookies. So I think it was like someone's niece, they put her Girl Scout cookie catalog into this little frame with four buttons, you could pick the different cookies you wanted, add it to a cart. [27:23] like, and this is just all within just like four buttons in an image, and then kick you out to like a checkout flow. [27:30] and then you'd get the cookie shipped to you. [27:32] Um, [27:33] And we had no intention of that being the thing. We were thinking people were going to do personality quizzes. Like, what's your astrology sign or something? And instead, people came up with all these really creative things. [27:45] We actually explicitly did not like connect it to a crypto wallet because we kind of mean like, we don't want this to be a security issue. Didn't matter. The developers figured out how to like, oh, click this frame and get a free mint on base. And like all that, like it was just amazing. [27:59] Within the simple primitive, [28:01] the pent up demand developers have for being able to modify an app that has a bunch of users. Right. And again, we are so small compared to the big guys. [28:11] But for crypto developers, like... [28:13] 18,000 people using the app every day, like that they can put an app in front of and you don't have to like do wallet connect to connect to it. You don't have to sign up with an email. You can literally just press a button. [28:22] And now you're using this app. [28:24] was just a huge brush of fresh air. And it like started to bring people who would never develop on Farcaster in. And so it's, it's, it's, it's,

[28:31] Been a tremendous response. [28:34] Part of me is really paranoid is like, OK, this is maybe going to go away next week. And so it's like, what can we do to keep the train rolling? So... [28:41] You know, major innovation. We are adding a single text box. That's it. Like you can type a little bit of text, but you can imagine now people are going to put LLMs, like the OpenAI stuff. So it's a, you know, you can generate an image or ask questions. [28:55] for advice or something and people are going to be able to do cool stuff with it. So I think very much like we are [29:00] blown away by the response. [29:01] And I think what it really speaks to is there are so many people who want to build these apps, but the hard part about getting people to use an app [29:11] is the distribution. [29:12] It was like, how do you break through the noise? Like you tweet it like, hey, we just launched... [29:16] Maybe you get 30 likes. [29:18] And it's like you spent six months building this thing. And then there's no way for you to go get users. And you don't have enough money. It's not like you're like this like really well-funded company that can go spend a ton of money on Facebook ads. [29:28] And so in 2024, it's just like, it's a distribution desert. There's no good way to like get in front of people to show them the thing that you're built. [29:36] But within this kind of very simple primitive that we've done with Farcaster, and because we're, you know, and I'm sure you guys know as creators, like, [29:43] Twitter nerfs links now. Like you put a link in the feed and you get no distribution. [29:48] Like they don't want you to leave the app. [29:51] Frames are just a link. We love links. Let's let people ship whatever they want and [29:58] grow their app. Because I think ultimately, if you can actually build

[30:02] something that helps build developers' user bases and businesses, [30:07] you're gonna get this flywheel, right? And then you're gonna have all this innovation. And then what I'm excited about, having been in crypto for 10 years, it was at Coinbase for five years. [30:16] is we might actually start to have like, [30:18] consumer apps and crypto that are just like easy to use, [30:22] and aren't like crypto in your face. [30:26] It's almost like a mullet, right? Can you imagine? Amen. Like Web 2 in the front, like really easy to use. And then like the crypto is like the party in the back that's happening. You don't even know. But yeah, like I think like that is, honestly, it's why I moved to Silicon Valley in 2013. And then I ended up at Coinbase. And one of the reasons I love working at Coinbase and crypto is it was making it easy to onboard. [30:48] Buy your first Bitcoin, buy your first ETH. [30:50] But the thing I was always frustrated with at Coinbase is it felt like the industry was still very much playing for this like... [30:56] um [30:57] trading oriented, like, I wanted to build apps or enable people to build apps even better is that, like, my mom can use and actually get some delight out of and then actually have the wonders that crypto provide happening behind the scenes. [31:13] And so, [31:15] We are a week into frames. [31:18] It very well could just not work, right? Like in terms of like, there's a very, a ton of interest and then it doesn't go away, but, or it goes away. But, [31:25] I'm optimistic that this is showing that there's so much demand for people to be able to have these [31:31] canvases to express

[31:34] interesting ways of doing stuff. [31:36] and doing it in a way that is also crypto native behind the scenes because then it just enables, you know, new functionality. I'm hoping to see frames, more frames that... [31:46] are not like specifically for developers so like I can totally get as you're talking about it I'm like if I'm a if I'm a developer man this is so fun not only do I now have the distribution I have this tool set that's really simple gives me some constraints to work in and I have all this stuff behind the scenes that I can tap into and so it totally makes sense why there's been an explosion of frames I think the Girl Scout cookie example something that is bringing something novel and new [32:16] very special and why I think this has a lot of potential. And so I'm really excited to see those types of frames as well. [32:22] Yeah, I also think that I already know that there are people working on like no code tools for friends because again, they're so simple. [32:29] It's actually a great platform for people to build something. It's like, okay, you upload an image or upload a few images, you can wireframe it out. [32:37] And then it just works. And so now all of a sudden you're unlocking a whole other creative... [32:43] group of people who are like, [32:45] I have an idea for a frame, but like traditionally, like building a mobile app is like probably too much for me because I don't know how to program. [32:50] Versus I can think through, like, if I click this button, show this image, and click this button, show this image. And so that is like the ultimate. If you can all of a sudden enable 10x or 100x more people to actually build these expressive experiences, [33:03] Again, we have a ways to go. We have to really deliver on the

[33:09] the kind of core primitive, but I could very much see a future where that really works out. And, and I think that would be great. [33:16] The Canva for social media. Please. I know we're coming up on time here, but I just want to end with here at Boys Club, we have a very feelings first approach to our work and this podcast and would love to just end on a feelings check-in with you specifically around, you know, I follow you on Farkaster and on Twitter and you really build in public and you've been very open about sort of the traction that you've gotten [33:46] it's taken for you guys to get where you are today. It's taken almost three years to get to 40,000 monthly active users you posted about recently. That to me, I see that and I am so encouraged to see a founder have so much conviction about what they're building and continue to do the hard work every day and wake up and look at the numbers and keep going, which is just really inspiring. So would love to just hear from you how that feels, how you're feeling today. What has the [34:16] years for you as a founder. [34:18] Yeah, so I think I'd say two things. So one, I'm fortunate in that I got to experience... [34:24] Um, [34:25] something similar with coinbase i joined in 2014 right as the kind of that bubble was crashing [34:30] So my first two years, two and a half years at Coinbase were like a long crypto winter. [34:36] before ETH even really existed. And so it was pretty dark.

[34:40] And I stayed because I was really inspired by Brian Armstrong and Fred's like commitment to kind of the vision. Like a lot of our competitors pivoted at that point. [34:49] And so, you know, 2017 was an incredible year for Coinbase. And so I think I learned a little bit of something about persistence. [34:56] Because I actually think if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't be surprised if I would have quit or we pivoted. [35:02] for Farcaster. If you look at that chart I shared on Twitter, it's like, [35:07] There is a long time in the wilderness when no one's using it. And it was like, literally, it was like me. [35:12] I was the only daily active user, even though we were onboarding people. [35:15] Um, [35:17] So I always kind of find it cringe when like people basically try to tell this like rosy story. And it's like every entrepreneur, every builder, anyone trying to build something new in the world [35:27] There's that grind for a very long time, and it can vary for each person. [35:31] And I think when people kind of like suppress it, I don't know why, like they try to make it seem like they were like this brilliant overnight thing. [35:38] I actually think it's really discouraging for people. And so I know how that has felt. And so [35:43] I... [35:44] It's absolutely brutal, right? Like you have anxiety, like, what am I doing? Like, should I be doing something different? And, [35:50] And I'm in a case where like I had some success from Coinbase, so I actually had like less pressure in certain areas. [35:56] And so I think it's a really, really challenging thing to mentally like manage your own mental state on that. [36:02] And I think anyone who is being honest with you goes through the same thing. [36:06] And it's actually created a lot more empathy for me about like basically anyone trying to do something in public and build something new.

[36:11] even if I don't like necessarily like their opinion or whatever, I just kind of be like, [36:15] They're going through a lot of hard stuff because they're actually trying to do it. It's much safer to just like take something a little bit more conventional versus risking out on your own. [36:23] And I think that the second thing is, um, [36:27] I really want to emphasize is like, I am only able to do what I do because really two, two people have really made this happen is, you know, [36:36] outside of my parents in my life, but my wife, I have two, two young kids, like, [36:41] She's been so supportive and patient with me when I'm coming in these huge mood swings of like, it's a roller coaster every day, right? Like it's like, [36:49] I'll be on top of the world and the next day it's like this whole thing is not going to work and [36:53] That's not like the most pleasant person to like come home to each night. And I think the kids have been a good modulating influence because there are little bundles of joy most of the time. [37:02] um but i think like your partner [37:06] through that is someone who [37:08] They don't get enough credit for actually helping modulate just how you're able to live your life. [37:15] You can see how it really puts stress on a lot of partnerships when you're doing something like that. The other thing is my co-founder. [37:21] I'm a little bit more... [37:24] distracted. Like I kind of buzz around and all this other kind of stuff. And my co-founder, Varun, is [37:30] Very level set and [37:32] rational [37:33] and willing to push back. [37:36] And I think, you know, I tend to be a little bit more of the public face. Like, it's just that's that's my job, but like,

[37:43] I... [37:44] You know, it's actually one thing I was just like, when people are like, oh, you're the founder. It's like, no, no, I'm a co-founder. Like there is zero version of me ever, you know, and we're not out of the woods. I always want to say that, but like to where we've gotten today without Varun, like impossible. Like I couldn't even imagine doing it with anybody else. [38:00] Um, just because I think most people I would have worked with, I would have either quit or, or, or the other person would. [38:06] And so the fact that he's been such a rock solid partner is like, [38:11] Yeah, I mean, those are the two people that have really made this work. [38:14] I love that. Dan, so inspiring. We're not out of the woods, but we're feeling very hopeful about 2024 and Farcaster. Shout out to the Boys Club channel on Farcaster. Also shout out to Ted, who is just such a champion of Farcaster, has been so persistent in recruiting us and the rest of the Boys Club community to come and join Farcaster and is just a joy and a delight. So shout out to her for also making this happen too. Ted is amazing. She's organizing Farcon in Venice [38:44] She has like 300 people who are showing up, which is amazing. All over the world, these are all internet strangers. [38:48] But yeah, and it's a great example of... [38:51] Going to the idea of creators, Ted, I don't think, had a very big audience on Twitter. [38:56] She showed up to Farkaster early, has been an amazing community member, really welcoming to new people. [39:01] I would call her Farcaster native. She can meme with the best of them and then kind of bring... She created Farcast Her, which is like... [39:09] I was actually a little skeptical because at the time it was like this whole like, oh, Farcaster doesn't have enough women. And like, you know, like, are we doing this just as like a token gesture? And she's like, no, no, I really want to own this and do it. And

[39:19] It's been phenomenally successful. [39:21] Huge shout out to her. [39:23] and everyone else in the community. I mean, it's so amazing to so many of the people in the 100 most followed people on Farcaster. Most of those names, you don't have big audiences on Twitter. Yeah, you have a few, but like, for the most part, these are new [39:38] There are new micro celebrities. There are new people who are new voices that are actually now having some distribution as the network has grown. And [39:45] I'm excited to see where that goes. And I think, um, [39:48] Yeah, it's been really, it's been one of the unexpected things is I didn't think I would have like all these internet strangers who I now, you know, a lot of them I haven't met in person, but like, [39:59] I have a human relationship with way more people in my life. [40:03] as a result of doing this thing. And so even if it doesn't work out, I think there's been a lot of very positive things along the way. [40:10] And it's definitely improved me as a person. Well, thank you so much. What a treat to have you on on such a big week. And so great to hear about everything that you're building. Thank you so much, Dan. Thanks for having me. When you're first getting started with crypto, it can be scary. Am I doing this right? Is this just like my bank or trading app? How is it new and different? Well, that's why we love Kraken. They have a 24-7, 365 customer support team that's there to hold your hand all along the way. This isn't a 9-to-5 Monday to Friday bank. This is crypto. [40:40] Anyone's welcome. Open door policy. Come one, come all. Try something new at kraken.com backslash boys club. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Cryptocurrency services are provided to U.S. and U.S. territory customers by Payward Ventures Incorporated, PBI, DBA, Kraken. Hi. Hey. We're here. In the same room.

[41:02] In the same room, I've got the most budget set up. [41:05] But you know what? [41:07] live laugh love you know so just for the listener she has a suitcase first of all on the floor suitcase on the floor sitting cross-legged in front of a suitcase on the floor on top of the suitcase has a laptop with a pinned on alex cooper light and then the mic on top of the suitcase as well so honestly it's a travel setup gorgeous it's gorgeous i also have to lean over to talk to the video it's gonna be beautiful okay we're talking about some feelings it's a feeling check-in [41:35] It's a feeling strike in. And the feeling is I'm having fun. [41:39] I'm having fun. If you don't know, we are playing crypto the game. So I'll explain briefly what crypto the game is. Think survivor, internet survivor. I actually haven't seen much on chain yet. So it's internet survivor for specifically for I'd say like crypto people, crypto nerds. You had to put 0.1 ETH into the pot to play the game. That's almost all of Natasha's ETH. [42:09] It's a joke kind of for those listening. And they have 50... [42:13] ETH in the pot. There was some drama with bots. We can get into that, which I've been following closely because I was up at 3.[redacted address] to Nashville. And so anyway, that's neither here nor there. So the game starts, you're assigned to a tribe. [42:29] So there was about 400 people, I think, that joined. And then all those people are assigned to different tribes. I think there were 10 tribes.

[42:37] Dina and I are on different tribes, different teams. Shout out to the yellow team. And the blue team. I will say that Dina and I are in cahoots. Majorly in cahoots. Majorly in cahoots. I do think that we'll be, well, we can get into alliance, alliances. Yeah. Someone reached out to me and said, would you like to join a female alliance? And I will say as a survivor watcher, that is a tried and true method to win. And so I feel like it's possible to do that once we merge. [43:07] you play virtually every day. Your team is trying to figure out today was a puzzle game. You got four words. Your team had to try to figure out what it was. And each day we're going to have that. And then if you don't win the challenge, your team has to vote people out like Survivor. And the reason why we're having feelings checking around it is one, we're really in it. We're in the middle of it. It's a lot that's going on in our headspace right now. We went out to lunch with Dave, your husband, and he had the worst lunch of his life because all we were doing was trying to solve this puzzle. And we got really close. We got really close. We're having a lot [43:37] it, I would say that it's not good for my screen time. Being unplugged. More plugged in than ever. Can you believe it? And then the other thing that I'll say is this, along with the conversation we're going to have in a little bit with Dan Romero from Farcaster and some stuff that's going on there, which we're going to talk about called frames, feels like... [43:56] bull market yeah i think there's a fun consumer crypto thing that's happening here there's some energy like you can feel that the feeling of that you're missing out that there's things that are going on that there's experiments that are happening and that people are trying new things and some of it's weird and some of it's not working and people are making mistakes but there's a experimentation that feels fresh and really fun to play around with when and makes you realize wow there's not been a lot of this for the past two ish yeah yeah i'd say crypto the game isn't

[44:26] without its criticisms and isn't without I think even so far we're in day two having had some major learnings but it's it's fun barcaster frames are fun both of them seem kind of like ephemeral so I don't know what that means in terms of stickiness for the product certainly but like the industry generally I think you can maybe shop like that out and have some concern around that but I think it's fun for now and I do think that crypto the game there's a couple things I hope we explained it [44:56] it's survivor-like tactics and games over a course of days people are voted out and then someone at the end will win that whole pot of money minus 10 minus 10 take from crypto the game team yeah good for them good for them good for them i will be interested to see if there's anything very uniquely crypto about it except for the pooling of the money i mean i think the pooling of the money is something that [45:17] could only be done so easily in using crypto. But like the first challenge was like tweeting about it. So that obviously didn't need to be a crypto thing. And then the second challenge was A16Z deep state psyops. [45:31] God tier marketing from the A16Z crypto team, where basically it was like a series of words. Everyone was given... [45:38] four words and you had to basically try and figure out like you had to solve the puzzle [45:42] which was... [45:43] a response to those four words and the the thing that basically tied all of them together is christics and reed brydon so good for them good for him so that requires crypto knowledge and like you have to be in the community to have solved that question certainly but it'll be interesting to see if there's any like on-chain sleuthing things when people were first getting their words for this challenge there was some chatter in the blue team's twitter group that it might be a seed phrase which i thought would have been very cool if they had opened up all of

[46:13] - Yeah. [46:14] or even just one wallet and someone had to get to a combination of those words as quickly as possible to open to get a wallet. And then some stuff being in that wallet and then that being included in the next thing I thought would have been really interesting and very on-chain. So, yeah, I'm curious, similarly, if there'll be more stuff like that that feels more not only just... [46:32] the culture around crypto, but like the tooling as well. I will say one of the early mistakes from Crypto the Game was that in order to have solved the puzzle that was out today, someone had to physically go to a store in Williamsburg in Brooklyn to retrieve the answer. Yeah, which you could argue not cool because not everybody's in Williamsburg. That's not the center of the world, despite what everybody thinks. But I do like URL to IRL, but then I'm like, okay, you're going to [47:02] as well or something. Totally. And like Bangalore. Right. That was also another criticism around the time zones for the challenges. A lot of the challenges are so far have been time gated, where like you have to put in an answer or participate in a certain window of time. And if you're [47:18] on the other side of the world that is challenging when they're working to Eastern time zone. So, some learnings for the team. [47:25] No one asked. No one asked. There was some drama, though, that I just want to quickly get into where there was a period of time where you had to join and put your ETH up and there was a window there. And someone very close to the end of that window was... [47:41] joined. And I think it was like 160 other people joined at the exact same time, all with Twitter accounts with no followers. And you had to verify through Twitter. And so basically they identified that this was someone who had joined and then they had created bots to join with all the other bots. And this person, I believe, was open about it on Twitter and saying like this was their strategy and this was the way that they were going to purchase the game. And the team at Crypto the

[48:11] as the person that they assumed had been responsible for the bots and banned them from the game because it was a violation of the terms of service and kept their pool of money in. [48:20] And there's quite a bit of chatter on the internet about it. And the great thing about working in crypto is if you're up in the middle of the night, you got something to do. You got something to read. You have some content to tap into. Exactly. And so I went through and read some stuff. And it's interesting. I think I can totally see both sides. [48:37] in terms of refunding the money, not refunding the money. Some people had some arguments around having bots in the game [48:43] is a part of internet culture and like a part of crypto and that's something that should be [48:48] designed for and [48:49] sort of celebrated and things like that. And I can totally understand that, but that's a very specific type of game for a developer. And that's a game about how quickly can you create shortcuts and utilize all this different tooling to do something interesting. And that's super cool, but I'm not interested in playing that game because I will lose that game. And so I do think for this round, [49:09] of this game, I do like the idea that they're monitoring for bots and making sure that there's actually verified people contributing and trying to solve for this stuff. [49:18] There was some chat in the yellow team telegram. It's someone saying, if I went, I would send them back the fees he lost. [49:26] or highly suggest whoever else wins does the same because taking the entries and banning the bots does feel really dumb. [49:31] And then someone else says, [49:33] I don't know. I should have sold my loot bags in 2021 too. If they want to talk about crypto morals, no refunds is a pretty standard one. It's like the first lesson you have to learn, which I kind of see that too. I will say, I can't remember the name of the person who claimed responsibility and the

[49:49] seemed to be the responsible party, had a pretty good attitude about it. [49:53] And basically was saying that, you know, you live and you learn and it's all in good fun. Clearly in a different economic reality than I am. [50:10] Okay, well, I'm glad to have some fun on the internet. Yeah, me too.