I joined Farcaster in July 2022 — one of the earliest users, #280.

I’d seen the web evolve from static pages to platforms, from personal publishing to algorithmic feeds. I lived Web 1’s openness, Web 2.0’s promises, and the eventual centralization that crushed so many of its early ideals.

Farcaster looked like a chance to start over — to build something open, censorship-resistant, and (“sufficiently”) decentralized.

In those early days, Farcaster was small. You practically knew everyone. It reminded me of early Twitter — a place where conversation mattered more than visibility.

I’d had my share of online attention in the past. It’s exciting at first, but it’s not as satisfying as people think — at least not for me. I’ve come to value small, smart communities that care about the same things I do. That’s what Farcaster gave me in 2022: a group of people building, debating, and exploring what a better social web might look like.

It felt special. Every update, every discussion about protocol design or decentralization, felt like progress toward a shared goal — building something new and durable.

By late 2024, things started to feel different. I didn’t notice it then, but the focus had shifted. The goal was no longer "let’s build a sufficiently decentralized social network." It had become "not growing 10×, 100×, 1000× is an existential threat."

Those two goals aren’t mutually exclusive — but when you put growth first, you start accepting compromises elsewhere.

On the technical side, Farcaster evolved from a pure peer-to-peer protocol into one that depends on couple of validators. The conversation shifted from "how do we make this protocol resilient, censorship-resistant and a platform to build on?” to "how do we onboard more users?"

Developers building mini-apps — especially those that attracted new users — were celebrated. Requests from those working on lower-level stuff directly interacting with the protocol were mostly ignored, or put at the bottom of the priority list. The incentives and the culture reflected that shift.

It’s not that the Merkle Manufactory team is wrong — they’re an incredible product team, and I admire them for this. They are extremely competent, they deliver at an impressive pace, they have taste, they steward and empower the community. But they think like product people, not open-platform stewards or decentralization crusaders. If they had to choose between building the iPhone or Linux, they’d build the iPhone every time, with the AppStore and everything.

I don't feel that they relate¹ to the lifecycle of products in the open-source or hacker world, where things often start as rough hacks — scripts and duct tape held together by curiosity — and then evolve, sometimes by completely different teams, into polished tools with GUIs and nice websites. In that world, the most important thing isn’t polish; it’s lowering friction for experimentation and empowering the first step. Sometimes you even have to sacrifice features to make it easier for hackers to play and explore.

Building open systems requires that mindset — comfort with decentralization, messiness, and loss of control. That’s the bazaar way, not the cathedral. Farcaster started as a bazaar. Over time, it became a cathedral. ²

Today, my relationship with Farcaster is… complicated.

Even the language has changed. What we used to call "Farcaster," the protocol, is now Snapchain. And the main app — previously Warpcast — is now called Farcaster.

That evolution mirrors how I feel: the app and the protocol have swapped importance.

I’m actually optimistic about Farcaster the app. It’s one of the best crypto wallets I’ve used — intuitive, feature-rich, and beautifully designed. The acquisition of Clanker, a token-launching platform, feels like a smart step toward a more dynamic, crypto-native social experience. I’m genuinely bullish on that direction.

But I’m less optimistic about Snapchain, the protocol. It’s open, and its design makes it hard (though not impossible) to gate — which is good. I still run my own node at home, and I still integrate parts of my workflow with Snapchain.

But it’s clearly no longer the main focus. Snapchain exists to support the app, not the other way around.

That’s a reversal of the original vision: the protocol would be the enduring layer, and the apps would come and go on top of it.

Two years ago, I could imagine a future where other clients emerged, Warpcast was sunset, and the core team focused entirely on the protocol. Today, I can’t unsee a different future — one where the app is extremely successful, but the protocol is sunset because it’s no longer needed.