Funding: Exploring the recent $150 million funding round that catapulted Farcaster to unicorn status
One funding round that has particularly piqued my interest over the past two weeks has been Farcaster. The decentralized social networking protocol has raised the second-largest funding round in the cryptocurrency industry this year ($150 million Series A at a reported valuation of $1 billion), following Monad’s $225 million funding last April. I did. Such a significant round in unicorn valuation is not common in cryptocurrencies. So what’s so special about Farcaster and why are investors bullish about it?
Farcaster was founded in 2020 by former Coinbase executives Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan. They also developed an app called Warpcast on top of Farcaster, which feels mostly similar to X (formerly Twitter), with some additional encryption features.
Farcaster has a cryptocurrency-focused audience and has been primarily dogfooded by Warpcast. Currently, the total number of users is 444,409, but the protocol’s goal is to ultimately reach over 1 billion users.
When I spoke to Farcaster’s investors to find out why they support the protocol, they explained that it is in part due to their developer-centric approach, with a focus on founders and building regular, quality, active users.
These investors are also doubling down on their investment by backing startups built on Farcaster. For example, Variant supported Nook and Kiosk, the Farcaster clients or apps, and Farworld Labs, the native Farcaster gaming platform. Variant’s Jesse Walden and Alana Levin recently wrote, “Early-stage team support goes hand in hand with Farcaster support. Protocols succeed when third-party businesses can be built sustainably.” “The more teams working to onboard new users, the better.”
Linda Xie is currently developing Bountycaster, a platform where Farcaster users can post and search for bounties or services.
Farcaster’s focus on developers and quality users appears to have caught the attention of investors. This can create a cycle where developers build great apps, attract users, and attract more developers and users. Warpcast is currently similar to Twitter, but the underlying protocol itself could further inspire apps like TikTok or entirely new social networks. That’s when it gets popular.
But can Farcaster reach non-crypto and mainstream audiences? “It’s still too early to tell,” said the cryptocurrency founder and active user of Warpcast. “That’s like asking if Facebook can expand when it’s still focused on colleges and universities.”
Linda Xie on Farcaster’s Challenge
Xie acknowledges that while he is investing in Farcaster and building a product on top of the protocol, Farcaster may struggle to grow its user base beyond cryptocurrency-focused users and prevent spam bots in its app.
“The challenging aspect of Farcaster is building the best client that can scale beyond the cryptocurrency community and handle spam,” she added. “Spam is a challenge on all social media platforms, but I think that’s the power of Farcaster. Badges are a step in the right direction.”
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