I'll be the first to admit that I was a Farcaster bear. To be honest, I still don’t know the difference between Warpcast and Farcaster (and apparently it’s sometimes called Merkle too?).

But after this most recent season of Crypto: The Game, which by nearly all accounts was the best one yet, I can’t stop thinking about Farcaster and how every crypto founder should drop everything to start building on it if they want to manufacture growth.

In late 2023, when I first started seeding the idea of CTG on Twitter, I got a cold DM from Graham McBain: “You gotta launch on Farcaster. It’s such an active community and tons of high-signal people.” I thought, sure. At that point, no one outside of my personal network (and those I was shamelessly DMing myself) had heard of CTG, and I figured any extra distribution might help. But like most of you reading this, I kind of assumed it was just another Twitter clone. Honestly, I was just going through the motions. I created a personal account, spun up (and paid for) the /crypto-the-game channel, and started casting. Zero likes. I basically told myself I’d cross-post whatever I shared on Twitter to the CTG Farcaster channel, and maybe someday someone would see it. It wasn’t a strategy. It was a checkbox.

Fast forward a year. CTG went on to have two viral seasons. We became the first crypto-native project to land on the Emmys ballot, scored a buzzworthy adidas partnership, and Ted (not Lasso) of Farcaster fame came in second place during Season 2. In that same span, Farcaster launched Frames, a wallet, rewards, Starter Packs, channel upgrades, and more. And suddenly I was getting the same kinds of DMs from Dan Romero that I had been sending to people about CTG. "You need to check this out." "I know you’ll love it." Like any founder who’s not afraid to cold DM customers, he was right.

Farcaster didn’t just make my life easier as a founder during Season 3. It made me realize how special it really is. It solved so many of my pain points, and I’m here to tell you what they were.

Frames

If we’ve ever worked together, you know that I’m always trying to remove friction. Fewer taps, bridging handled magically in the background, etc.

Creating a Frame, basically an in-feed, embeddable website, for Season 3’s entries let people see my post in their feed, tap a button or two, and secure their spot. All without ever leaving their feed. No browser redirects. No extra steps.

It was a huge unlock. Just smooth.

Starter Packs

Farcaster Starter Packs are like Twitter Lists, but better. With one tap, you can instantly follow everyone on the list individually. Unlike Twitter Lists, where you follow the list itself but not the people in it, this was a great way for me to acknowledge all of our players with a follow. And I’m pretty sure people appreciated it (who doesn’t love a follow?).

Players also started creating Starter Packs for their tribes. So instead of manually searching for your tribemates like you would on Twitter, you could use the NFT metadata tied to each tribe to generate a Farcaster Starter Pack. Instantly, you could follow and DM everyone in your group. Fully token-gated. Seamless.

Notifications

Another thing I did in late 2023 was meet with Nikita Bier to tell him about my idea for CTG, before Season 1. He was very, very bearish. Luckily, I kept building anyway. One thing he said, though, stuck with me. He pointed out that because we were building CTG as a PWA (progressive web app, basically a website) and not an iOS app, we wouldn’t have in-app notifications. That meant no way to tell players when a challenge was about to drop or when it was time to vote.

I had already decided to trust my gut, that the game would be engaging enough for people to remember the schedule on their own. And, uniquely, I was right. But I also knew from my time at HQ Trivia just how important push notifications are. As soon as people turned them off, we lost them as players. For good.

As the creator of the CTG channel on Farcaster, though, I suddenly had a workaround. Every time I pinned a cast to the channel, and I did this for nearly every challenge or reminder, everyone following the channel got a push notification. All of a sudden, we went from no notifications to being able to hijack Farcaster’s notifications to broadcast key announcements.

Imagine a world where you could notify specific Twitter users without their opt-in. Couldn’t be me.

DMs

If we follow each other on Twitter, chances are you’ve received a DM from me. Before CTG S1 launched, I was telling you what I was building. Once entries were live, I was reminding you to sign up. Between seasons, I was sending sneak peeks of what was coming. During the finale, I was nudging you to vote. The list goes on.

I could write a whole separate piece on leveraging your personal and professional network to manufacture growth, and how shameless you have to be to get your product off the ground. We did the same thing at Party Round from the brand account, DMing and asking for likes to kickstart growth. No shame.

I always used to think, if only there were a way to automate this. Enter Percs.

Percs was my best friend this season. It completely automated the individual DMing process for Farcaster. I was able to create audience segments from my followers, past CTG players (who I could cross-reference with Farcaster, since their player NFTs were in their wallets), channel followers, and more. Because every Farcaster profile is tied to onchain activity, building these segments was easy.

So when entries opened, I sent a “personal” DM to everyone giving them a heads up. When the game started, and again when the finale was coming, I created segments based on Season 3 NFT holders and sent them real-time messages, reminding them of key moments.

What used to take hours now took seconds.

Rewards

I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out Farcaster Rewards. I joined Twitter in June 2009, almost 16 years ago (insane). I’ve posted thousands of times to thousands of followers. And I’ve made exactly $0. Until now.

During the week of CTG Season 3 (granted, I was casting more than usual), I came in third place on the Farcaster Rewards leaderboard and got paid $300 for it. Not that that’s why I, or you, should start posting there. But for something that started the week as a checkbox, it was a nice surprise.

Shortly after announcing the return of CTG Season 3, I noticed some of our most engaged players were discovering the game first on Farcaster. And they weren’t just lurking. They were building Frames, creating lore, and dropping memes. This wasn’t passive distribution. They were co-creating the game with us in real time.

So hopefully this makes you curious enough to try out Farcaster like I did, after DMs from Graham... and, a year later, Dan.

If you liked this, find me on Twitter (@dylanabruscato) or Farcaster (@dylanabruscato). Yes, I now check both :)