FarCaster Hype: signups and usage surges | TS-003
FarCaster Hype: signups and usage surges | TS-003
Plus: Why Farcaster Frames are hyped, Jupiter's airdrop doesn't go as expected + more
Back for another week - do me a favour and share this with a friend if you learned something. Top Six Stories in Crypto Week 3 starts now.
TOP SIX STORIES IN CRYPTO
FarCaster: major hype for the crypto native social media site
Frames: the new tech that’s driving the FarCaster hype
$JUP token launched but didn’t pump at all… wtf?!
Is ApeCoin DAO too centralized?
Base L2 memecoins gain attention thanks to FarCaster
GBTC Outflows leveling out, BTC price stabilizing
1. FarCaster: major hype for the crypto native social media site
If you’ve been on Crypto Twitter lately, you know FarCaster is all the rage lately. You might’ve even created an account to check it out. On the surface, it appears to be just another Twitter clone - there’s a feed, you can casts your thoughts, recasts others, like, follow etc - but what’s different is that it’s a protocol that’s built on crypto rails. I won’t go over the details in this post, you can check out Packy’s article on Not Boring for an in depth look.
But the gist is:
FarCaster is a protocol for Social Media like SMTP is for Email
Just like how you can use any client for email (Gmail, Hey, Outlook), you can do the same with FarCaster (the client most people use today is called Warpcast)
You can attach an ETH crypto wallet to an account which lets you do cool things
Such as: seamlessly mint NFTs on your timeline (via Frames - next story)
Here’s an invite link to sign up, if you want to see for yourself
2. Frames: the new tech that’s driving the FarCaster hype
Let’s talk about Frames on FarCaster. Again, just the gist, Packy’s Not Boring article above covers the nitty gritty.
Essentially, someone figured out how to embed iFrames into a FarCaster tweet equivalent (call it a Cast). iFrames are commonly used to embed YouTube videos on the site itself. But when you used Frames on FarCaster, you can start to do really cool things like:
Mint NFTs right in your timeline:
Because this is powered by Base, the gas fees are astronomically low, so the creator decides to pay them. All you need to do is click mint, and the NFT is in your wallet instantly.
Purchase with crypto in your timeline:
This aptly named user created an order and checkout flow right in this Cast. Select which cookies you want, select quantity, and it lets you checkout with Coinbase Commerce.
Now, it’s not as seamless since it takes you to a new webpage to checkout, but this is the first time someone has used Frames like this. Imagine the possibilities - there’s something special happening with Frames and people are excited
3. $JUP token launched but didn’t pump at all… wtf?!
So, the $JUP token launched last week. But the launch was… abnormal - despite all the attention on it, the token barely pumped! This almost never happens and it got people curious. So they read Jup founder’s pre-launch posts - which actually outlined why this token would not pump (at least for the first week).
Here’s why:
Effectively, JUP created a liquidity pool with a tight range of $0.4 USDC - $0.7 USDC. It’s purpose was to offer deep liquidity to anyone that wanted to dump their airdrop immediately, and offer new purchasers a controlled price range to buy into. This would run for 7 days - which in Meow’s (Jup Founder) perspective was billed as an “anti-FOMO” tactic. The price could not drop below $0.4 USDC per JUP because there was no liquidity below it - and the price would not go above $0.7 for the same reason. They effectively created a price floor with very deep liquidity for anyone to dump their stack, or buy in at a good price if they believed in Jupiter’s vision.
But there were some critical takes on this airdrop launch, mainly that Jupiter did a token sale (ICO) without saying they did. Because Jupiter did not take VC funding, they needed to figure out how to fund their operations. Their funding plan, (which they detailed in public well before the airdrop) was to sell their portion of the JUP tokens into the public pool to buyers that wanted in. After some time, they would remove the liquidity and allocate some funds to the DAO, and others for the company. Some people thought this was ‘deceptive’ - but the reality is that this was all public information. The ones that didn’t know about the price floor and ceiling, were the ones that didn’t read and expected a pump.
In an industry that often is co-opted by VC insiders dumping their allocation on retail, it’s nice to see a a token launch that offered a fair way to raise money, and give retail the option to buy in. The only thing left is to see if it works in the long run.
4. Is ApeCoin DAO too centralized?
Lately, i’ve been coming across tweets like the following from the BAYC community:
There is constant selling pressure from all the ApeCoin issued to BAYC MAYC stakers, there is still considerable amount of token unlocks to come (launch partners, VCs, founders), and the DAO has turned into a whale game where 3-4 wallets control what gets funded and what doesn’t. That’s the sentiment of the coin lately, and it’s hard to argue against it.
At present, the Horizenlab (6.7M APE) and Mocaverse (6.3M APE) vote will decide whether your proposal passes or not. they make up 13M votes, which is more than half the total votes a proposal receives - and the community feels projects with animoca connections are often getting greenlit, while community projects are not. All DAOs are an experiment at the end of the day, and many don’t like the direction this has taken. Let’s see if they can turn it around.
5. Base L2 memecoins gain attention thanks to FarCaster
With all the attention FarCaster is receiving, Coinbase’s BASE L2 is getting some of the shine too (When you mint an NFT via Frames, you’re minting on BASE). This has led to some FarCaster memecoins rallying on this new attention.
An example is $DEGEN, which is used on Warpcast to tip someone if you really liked their Cast). In just the last week, it went from a marketcap of $8.5M to a high of $151M (it’s currently in a major retrace down to $73M).
This is the tokenization of attention at play, which I wrote about on my twitter feed today.
6. GBTC Outflows leveling out, BTC price stabilizing
After the exciting news of the BTC ETF approval in early January - the reality set in: the price was not going to pump because Grayscale will be selling hundreds of millions of their Bitcoin holding, because their clients would prefer exposure to Bitcoin via an ETF vs GBTC (the fees are significantly lower). After a rough 16 trading days, it appears were finally in the tail end of it. Their outflow rate is considerably slower: Their day 7 outflow was $640M USD, while now on day 16, it’s $145M.
And Bitcoin’s price reflects that - after a rough mid January which saw it touch a low of $38.5K USD, it’s been comfortably above 40K since then. Might we finally start to see a slow creep up to it’s ATH (~64K USD)? The halving is only ~12 weeks away. Exciting times are ahead!
That’s all for this week
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- atareh out