Author: Rebbeca Ren
According to L2BEAT's data, the transaction volume per second (TPS) of Degen Chain increased by 62% on April 18, reaching 35.7 TPS, setting the highest record in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Interestingly, despite recording a record TPS, the average value of each transaction on Degen Chain is only $0.27, far below Ethereum's $1867 and Base Chain's $170. On the other hand, the fully diluted market value (FDV) of $DEGEN tokens has grown from initially over $1 million to around $750 million as of today.
This performance is reminiscent of Pinduoduo: by offering sufficiently low prices and a simpler shopping experience, it has served more "budget-conscious" or more value-conscious consumers, attracted more new users who have never used an e-commerce platform, and achieved economies of scale, with its market value rising from $20 billion in 2018 to the current $190 billion.
Whether Degen Chain has the potential to replicate the success of Pinduoduo in the cryptocurrency world remains to be seen, but Farcaster, which gave birth to it, definitely deserves more attention.
1 What is Farcaster?
In short, Farcaster is a protocol based on the Ethereum Layer 2 Optimism mainnet launched by two early employees of Coinbase, used to build decentralized social applications. Although Farcaster may still be unfamiliar to some, it has become one of the hottest topics in the US crypto community in the past few months.
Warpcast is the first client application launched by the Farcaster protocol team and is currently the largest application under the protocol, with its monthly active users (MAUs) reaching 68,000 in April. Warpcast is closely integrated with the Farcaster protocol and data: all Warpcast accounts have a Farcaster ID and store the content it generates in Farcaster.
Source: Dune
Warpcast is a combination of Twitter and Reddit, allowing users to post and join channels of interest for discussions, and also supports the integration of mini-programs (Frames) for activities such as minting NFTs, claiming tokens, and conducting transactions.
The meme coin $DEGEN was born in the vibrant Degen community on the Warpcast platform. Initially airdropped to users in the community, it has now become the most mainstream tipping token on Warpcast. Warpcast users are also given a daily quota of 8 $DEGEN coins to encourage content creators and increase interaction between users.
With the increase in the number of holders, the $DEGEN team has launched the Ethereum Layer 3 network (L3) Degen Chain for issuing meme coins, which has pointed out a path for meme coins from "no use case" to "use case" and from "no value" to "value".
In addition to Warpcast, there are many other use cases under the Farcaster protocol:
At the same time, its ecosystem continues to expand. On May 2, the Ethereum-based decentralized blogging protocol Mirror announced its merger with former competitor Paragraph. The merged entity will be led by Paragraph founder Colin Armstrong and will operate on the Farcaster protocol.
The Mirror team will continue to operate as an independent company and plans to launch a platform called "Kiosk" based on the Farcaster protocol, integrating social and crypto asset trading.
2 How to use Warpcast?
Warpcast sets a higher entry barrier compared to Twitter, which is filled with spam and advertisements on the timeline. To use Warpcast, each new user needs to pay a fee of $5. If they enter through a friend's invitation link, the fee is reduced to $3. This fee is mainly used for data storage and spam filtering, ensuring the cleanliness and data security of the platform.
Purchase Warp. After downloading the Warpcast app from the App Store, you can purchase the in-app currency Warp. These coins will be used for specific operations, such as creating your own channel. The cost of creating a channel is 2500 Warps, equivalent to $25 per year. If you don't have these requirements, there's no need to purchase Warp.
Publishing content and interaction: Once you become a user, you can freely publish content and interact with other users. If you need more posting volume or storage space, additional fees are required. Additionally, some channels require users to pay a certain amount of Warp to post and comment.
Invite friends to click: Warpcast also encourages users to expand the community by inviting friends. For each new user invited, you can receive a reward of 50 Warp, which can be used to pay for platform services.
Through these steps, you can not only enjoy a social experience without advertising interference but also ensure that the community you are in maintains high quality and high activity. Through this unique mechanism, Warpcast provides users with a purer and more focused communication space.
Warpcast does not require you to have a cryptocurrency wallet to register and use, but if you want to use advanced features such as tipping, you need to link your wallet to your Warpcast account.
3 Who can beginners follow and which channels can they follow?
Vitalik Buterin (@vitalik.eth), V God is of course the first to follow.
Dan Romero (@dwr.eth) and Varun Srinivasan (@v), the two co-founders of Farcaster.
Jesse Pollak (@jessepollak), the creator of Coinbase's L2 Base Chain and the second most followed account on Farcaster. Base is one of the main channels on Farcaster, with over 219,000 followers.
Li Jin (@li), former a16z partner, now founder of Variant Capital, involved in projects such as MagicEden, Mirror, Phantom, etc.
The Degen channel (/degen), which nurtured $DEGEN and Degen Chain, has 78,300 followers.
The Farcaster channel (/farcaster), hosted by Dan and Varun, has 192,000 followers. If you are interested in the Chinese community, you can follow the Pionex channel (/hpgybtc), which has over 800 followers.
You can also follow the two chefs from CryptoKitchen, Degenmeow (@Degenmeow) living in New York and Jean (@jeanchen) in Shanghai. We will occasionally share our views on cryptocurrencies, daily life of cats, meme images, or organize events.
4 Is V God optimistic about Farcaster, and is Friend.tech causing a stir again, igniting the heat of SocialFi?
On May 3, last summer's Web 3.0 social platform Friend.tech airdropped $FRIEND tokens to its users, which quickly surged to a high of $167 shortly after its launch, causing a significant impact on the price of the leading meme coin $DEGEN on Farcaster.
Discussions about whether the SocialFi craze is coming back have sprung up. In fact, combining social networks with decentralized finance in SocialFi is very important for the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies:
For example, it is easier to use, and its natural social attributes can attract more users to join and understand cryptocurrencies; using tokenization to reward user contributions, incentivizing participation and investment in cryptocurrencies; using blockchain-based governance tools to strengthen community building, creating a collaborative and transparent environment, etc.
# Video Sharing: The True Meaning of Social in Web3 | CryptoKitchen23 ⑤
Although there have been frequent attempts in the SocialFi field, most of them have been short-lived, and retaining users is still the key to long-term success.
Friend.tech, which has always been labeled as "speculative," has not been able to recover since its platform activity sharply declined after reaching a feverish peak several months ago. The recent airdropped tokens, although causing temporary attention, quickly plummeted from $167 to around $2 due to lack of liquidity and a selling frenzy.
V God has also criticized Friend.tech, believing that its use of financial speculation to replace genuine social interaction is the reason for its failure. He believes that, similar to GameFi, SocialFi should focus on "fun" rather than "speculation".
At the same time, V God has been impressed by the user engagement, content quality, tipping mechanism, and various games and NFT minting experiences provided through mini-programs (Frames) on the Farcaster platform. He is optimistic about Farcaster, predicting that the platform will not be eliminated from the market in the short term, and emphasizing the importance of truly interesting content and community building.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
