From **Deep Worth: Notes on Creativity, Labor, and Value**

by Danica Swanson - 5 January 2025

In a long thread on Farcaster, Dan Romero recently mentioned that Farcaster is still working on developing a clear value prop.

Dan writes: “We haven’t figured out a repeatable value prop. For some people it’s the people. That doesn’t scale. For some people it’s make money. But that’s not consistent enough for every user.”

We've all heard Dan say there's "not enough interesting content." Meanwhile, some of the design decisions on Warpcast are actively hindering easy discovery of some of the most interesting content of all: the deep-threaded conversations.

Furthermore, there are still no clear paths to a sustainable livelihood for the people contributing all that content, building communities, and moderating channels. Thus, the default approach presumes "free" labor.

I love Farcaster, I respect the Merkle team, and I want the ecosystem to succeed. So with that in mind, here are some notes on the view from where I sit.

• On Warpcast, the feeds are “stuck in the perpetual now.” I’m aware that this design choice is deliberate and many people like it. But for those who enjoy lingering over long drawn-out convos, it’s also frustrating. Without reply-bumping or some other way of re-surfacing deep-dive threads to make them easier to find, the fruits of our labor just get buried and vanish into the ether (so to speak), and we miss out on attractive opportunities to contribute. This kind of information impermanence leaves us with no good way to:
  • collect and preserve “best-of” threads in-app for future reference;
  • keep channel rules ready-to-hand; or
  • curate TL;DR quick-find lists in-app to help new folks get oriented.
• Most rewards — including discovery of ongoing deep-dive convos, which is a kind of reward — don’t seem to flow primarily toward quality or long-term impact; they flow primarily toward attention. Casters who focus more on quality than maximizing attention usually have modest follower counts for that reason, and their content stays low-profile no matter how good it is. (@gilles is a good example, but there are many more). My own name still appears in lists of under-followed accounts (most recently by matthewb) even though I’ve been casting every day for almost two years and have attended IRL meetups. (I don’t perceive this as a numbers problem; I don’t have any desire to go viral! But I do want my work to be easily discovered by more of the people who might appreciate it).
• Even when I do stumble upon great threads, trying to read all the sub-threads on Warpcast is confusing. It requires many clicks, and in some cases it’s not even clear that there are more replies hidden beneath the one you’re looking at. This adds extra labor and frustration for the very people who might contribute the most thoughtful replies: the ones who are digging deep into threads, hungry to read more.

It’s the deep-dive convos that make Farcaster really shine. We’re nerds! We love rabbit holes. Help us find more of them so we’ll get nerd-sniped and jump in! Consider these suggestions (addressed to everyone in the ecosystem):

1. Build something that can help surface and re-surface more of the deep-threaded discussions. Make it easier for us to discover ongoing threads that are worthy of our attention, so we can read and contribute.
2. Develop economic models to sustainably fund the maintenance labor required behind the scenes by the contributors of all that content. Skilled moderators, content creators/curators, and community-builders will need paths toward making a livelihood in the FC ecosystem, so they can free up more time for that kind of work instead of spending it at their day jobs or grinding on web2 platforms. Several projects in the ecosystem (e.g., degen, Moxie, Hypersub) have made inroads in that direction, but for most of those who need recurring revenue streams at a quit-your-day-job level, there’s still a long way to go. (Note: To be fair, Dan is well aware of this need. In May 2024, for example, he mentioned that Merkle believes in allowing channel creators to choose their own economic models, which “is going to lead to higher quality outcomes because now, being a mod is not some thankless job to make high-quality content and not get paid effectively.”)

If well-executed, these two improvements could help not just the crypto nerds, but everyone on Farcaster who enjoys reading deep-dives on whatever topics Farcaster does well.

For me, the opportunity to read and participate in deep-dive convos with brilliant people is Farcaster’s most compelling value prop. If the FC ecosystem can get #2 right, it will have an even more compelling value prop — something that, for most content creators, cannot be found elsewhere.