🌐 Brave Launches .brave Domains. The privacy browser debuted its own onchain domains, which are minted as NFTs on Polygon via Unstoppable Domains and support IPFS website hosting.
🪙 Noice Arrives on Farcaster. The new social platform centered around USDC tipping and creator tokens that unlock access, perks, and more released its Farcaster Mini App and its $NOICE token atop Base.
🤖 Bankr Expands on Solana. The AI-powered crypto wallet is launching support for Solana token launches this Friday, powered by a new acquisition of the AI IS DEV team.
The Farcaster ecosystem's advancing fast and enjoying new airdrops, new chains, and new features lately. Let's catch you up with a quick rundown on some of the biggest intrigues.
📱 The Warpcast rebrand: Farcaster is a decentralized social network protocol. You create social apps atop it. We've seen a variety of clients (e.g. Herocast, Litecast, Super, etc.), but the most popular by far has been Warpcast, the flagship app developed by the Farcaster team.
That said, many new users have been confused by the Farcaster-Warpcast naming split. People tend to ask, “Are you on Farcaster?” and not “Are you on Warpcast?” and so forth.
To nix that problem, the Farcaster team has decided to simplify by rebranding both the Warpcast mobile and web apps to Farcaster.
Another interesting wrinkle here: the team has discussed open-sourcing the codebases of the Warpcast apps, which could lead to a new wave of projects adapting these foundations toward alternative and more experimental Farcaster clients.
💸 Pro subscriptions planned: In other news, Farcaster cofounder Dan Romero just confirmed the team is preparing to launch a new “Pro” subscription tier for Farcaster power users. The premium membership, slated to cost $10 a month, will offer advanced features like 10k character casts, 4 image uploads per post, and more later.
Notably, all of the earnings from this onchain subs system will be allocated flywheel-style to Farcaster's Creator Rewards program, which already distributes $25k USDC weekly across the top posters on Farcaster.
“The protocol needs to find long-term revenue source that can continue fund caster and developer rewards beyond any one company,” Romero explained. “We originally thought storage fees could be that, but we’ve realized that storage fees should be essentially free to help growth.”
🪂 The first Farcaster airdrops: Earlier this year, Farcaster released a native wallet for its mobile and web apps to make it easier to transact with its blooming ecosystem of Mini Apps. Now, this wallet is becoming a hub for easily claimable airdrops.
Farcaster has some of the most active onchain users, which crypto projects are always looking to win over. So Farcaster has been collaborating with third-party teams to deliver airdrops, like $CELO and $WCT, directly to Farcaster wallet users. $110k has been airdropped this way so far, and more distributions are on the way.
The win-win idea is that these teams can attract new high-quality users while making Farcaster that much more enticing.
These first drops have averaged around ~$10 a pop, offering an easy way to keep your Farcaster wallet loaded. But Linda Xie, Farcaster's developer ecosystem lead, has noted that some projects will exclude people who have sold multiple prior airdrops. If you dive in here, consider holding as long as possible to maximize your chances for future distributions.
⛓️ New ecosystems incoming: Base is the most popular chain among Farcaster projects to date, but we're starting to see more variety. For example, Celo and the Monad testnet were recently integrated for Mini Apps and Farcaster's wallet, and even bigger integrations are incoming.
For starters here, Farcaster is currently working on a new Solana wallet beta, with a full rollout coming in short order. The arrival should be a considerable catalyst for the Solana Mini Apps scene.
If the team continues to launch support for new ecosystems like this, they'll be in good position to make Farcaster one of the top social activity hubs across all of the top chains. Keep an eye on these advances.
🤳 Coinbase Wallet integration: Coinbase Wallet is one of the most popular apps and onchain gateways in crypto, and it's been totally rebuilt for its upcoming 2.0 revamp. One of the main new pillars of this revamp is a native Farcaster integration.
In other words, soon you'll be able to post and transact on Farcaster directly from within Coinbase Wallet. There will be an in-wallet social feed you can scroll and comment through, plus a search and discovery flow for Farcaster Mini Apps.
This new wallet experience isn't live for everyone yet, but you can go ahead and join the beta waitlist through this form. If accepted, you'll receive an invite link to onboard.
Considering Coinbase's reach, look for this integration to potentially bring a big surge in the number of active Farcaster users in the months ahead.
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Not financial or tax advice. Bankless content is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
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