Original ｜Odaily Planet Daily（@OdailyChina）

Author｜Golem（@web3_golem）

On December 8, Dan Romero, co-founder of Farcaster, announced that the platform has abandoned its "social-first" strategy that it adhered to for four and a half years, shifting to a wallet-centric growth model, hoping to attract more users by creating an excellent wallet. This means that Farcaster's new features and product positioning will now center around consumer wallets, rather than a decentralized social graph.

Following the decline of friend.tech, Farcaster has been seen as the "flag bearer" of SocialFi, backed by top VCs (a16z, Paradigm) with $1 billion in funding, crypto celebrities (Vitalik, Coinbase founders, etc.) promoting it, and the occasional wealth effect (Degen, Clanker, etc.). Each hot topic can spark a new wave of enthusiasm among crypto users, but after "three minutes," users quickly lose interest, and platform activity plummets.

This may be because Farcaster lacks real product-market fit. Long before decentralized social applications emerged, the crypto community was already deeply rooted in Web2 social applications like Twitter, Telegram, and Discord, which perfectly covered various social needs.

Farcaster's "social-first" strategy was essentially just a copy of Twitter, failing to create sufficient migration motivation for users. Social products require real scenarios and differentiation; crypto users cannot abandon the social graphs and relationship chains they have built on Web2 social platforms like Twitter to start from scratch on Farcaster (unless they are "tomorrow's influencers" with no prior accumulation).

Dan Romero himself may also be aware of the issue, realizing that merely selling ideals like decentralization and data sovereignty cannot retain users. Therefore, rather than stubbornly persisting in a hopeless area, it is better to change the approach and gain user growth from the recognized Web3 entry point—wallets—and find new product-market fit.

But has Farcaster really given up on crypto social? In my view, it has not; rather, this is a long-overdue course correction after four and a half years.

Since existing social scenarios have already been covered by Web2 social applications, we should create new crypto social scenarios. Dan Romero has named this strategy "attracting users with tools and retaining them with networks." He chooses to enter social through wallet scenarios, where social needs will naturally arise in users' on-chain transaction/payment scenarios, and the decentralized social infrastructure that Farcaster originally built can provide users with a smooth one-stop experience.

However, Farcaster is still late to the game; this "build social scenarios first, then develop social applications" approach has already been seized by others, namely CEXs.

Crypto Exchanges Entering the Social Platform Space

Asset investment behavior is inherently related to social networks, as everyone is responsible for their own "bag." It can even be said that the entire social demand in the crypto space (both public and private) is generated in investment and trading scenarios. Therefore, under this logic, it is advantageous for crypto exchanges to develop social features by creating trading scenarios, much like how WeChat leveraged social networks to facilitate payments.

The first to successfully implement this product was Binance. One day, when Binance's product manager was frustrated by constantly switching between Twitter and Binance, he suddenly had a lightbulb moment: why not create a social platform within the Binance main site? This way, users could freely share social information.

Thus, in October 2022, Binance launched the content aggregation platform Binance Feed, which was renamed Binance Square a year later, while also opening up UGC (user-generated content) and launching a "content mining" feature.

"Content mining" allows creators to add token tags (e.g., $BTC) to the content they publish on Binance Square (including short messages, articles, videos, polls, voice live streams, or chats). Whenever Binance's regular users or VIP 1-2 users click on the token tags in the creator's content to conduct spot, leverage, or contract trading, the creator can earn up to 50% of the transaction fee as a rebate.

By 2023, Binance had already established itself as a top global exchange. The incentive mechanism of Binance Square acted like a match thrown into a haystack, instantly igniting a wildfire. By the end of 2023 (two months after launching "content mining"), the number of creators on Binance Square increased from 1,200 to 11,000, and by the end of 2024, the monthly active users of Binance Square reached 35 million.

Now, in 2025, Binance maintains its position as the largest exchange globally, with 300 million registered users, which also means that the user ceiling for Binance Square has reached 300 million. More importantly, these 300 million users are "refined" users from Binance, who have clear goals—to profit in crypto finance. In the trading scenarios created by Binance, they also have clear and defined objectives when using Binance Square—to find trading signals or wealth codes.

Where there is demand, there will be supply. A large and high-quality user base, combined with the "content mining" rebate incentive, has led not only top traders, analysts, and KOLs to spontaneously migrate/synchronize from social platforms like Twitter to Binance Square, but also a large number of native crypto bloggers have emerged from Binance Square, gradually becoming the social "moat" of Binance Square.

Binance Square Advertisement

The tremendous success of Binance Square has prompted other exchanges to follow suit. Last week, OKX announced in Dubai that it will soon launch a trading exchange social platform—OKX Planet, which includes three major features: community, live streaming, and group chat, openly positioning itself against Binance Square. Some KOLs even revealed that OKX extended invitations to top creators from Binance Square to join their platform.

Compared to OKX, other exchanges have been laying the groundwork for content square features for a longer time—Gate established its content square in 2023, and Huobi launched its content square in the second half of 2023…

It is clear that the battle for social space has reached crypto exchanges, but this also proves that exchange social platforms, exemplified by Binance Square, have a high degree of product-market fit.

Moreover, for creators, another obvious advantage of exchange social platforms is the significantly reduced risk of account bans and compliance issues. Although governments worldwide are gradually relaxing crypto regulations, the crypto industry is always associated with investment, money, and "gray" areas, leading crypto bloggers on Web2 social media to frequently face reports and bans. On exchange social platforms, such risks will be greatly reduced; on one hand, the content nature of the platform is inherently compatible with crypto bloggers since it is built on crypto trading scenarios; on the other hand, exchange users are already filtered "quality users," who have a high level of tolerance for crypto bloggers.

This characteristic may also become the core competitive advantage of exchange social products against Web2 social products like Twitter in the future. After all, the main battleground for the Chinese crypto community used to be domestic public media like Weibo, and it was only due to regulatory crackdowns that they were forced to migrate en masse to Twitter. It is possible that one day a similar large-scale migration will occur with exchange social products.

Of course, while the above example of "Binance Square" illustrates that exchanges have inherent advantages in developing social platforms, the core of exchanges remains crypto trading. It is not wise to develop exchange social platforms without a sufficient user base in trading.

What Kind of Social Product Does the Crypto Community Really Need?

Looking back at the history of crypto social product development, those that touted decentralization and SocialFi, such as Friend Tech, Lens, and Farcaster, have all experienced moments of glory, but ultimately, they have either died or been severely injured. In contrast, highly centralized Web2 social platforms like Twitter have consistently accompanied the crypto community. Even the newly emerging exchange social platforms seem to diverge significantly from the capital-promoted Web3 social narrative.

This naturally raises a thought-provoking question: what kind of social product does the crypto community really need?

First, it is essential to clarify that decentralization is merely a means to achieve a goal, not the goal itself. When this means fails to meet our objectives, it should be decisively abandoned. In social contexts, users are most concerned about information value, sense of belonging, ability to connect with others, and entertainment, rather than whether it is decentralized; the same applies to crypto social.

Over the past five years, SocialFi has led crypto social into a Ponzi scheme, overly focusing on the "Fi" aspect of crypto social while neglecting the "Social" part. Short-term traffic and token hype can create temporary prosperity, but in the long run, it cannot establish trust or any quality content; collapse is the only outcome for SocialFi.

In my view, what the crypto community needs is simply a social product that can connect crypto scenarios, facilitate meaningful exchanges, and generate trust and collaboration based on that, regardless of whether it is decentralized or "Fi." This is merely about returning crypto social to its essence—built for scenarios, existing to connect people.

Perhaps it can be stated more bluntly: we need more Binance Squares, not the former Farcaster.

Further Reading

SocialFi's "Narrative Failure": Does Crypto Social Still Have a Future?

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