A Brief Analysis of Farcaster, the Decentralized Social Network Advocated by Vitalik

Wu said blockchain
2023-09-25 09:34:15
Collection
Farcaster aims to address four core issues of decentralized social networks: identity, authentication, availability, and consistency.

Author: defioasis

Source: Wu Says Real

Last week, Vitalik Buterin's Twitter account was hacked and used to post phishing links, resulting in user losses exceeding $690,000. After investigation, Slowmist's Yu Xian pointed out that the phishing organization behind the Vitalik Twitter hack is still related to the currently hot and crazy PinkDrainer, and the hacking method may have been SIM hijacking or other possibilities. Two days later, Vitalik stated on the decentralized social media platform Farcaster that his Twitter account had indeed suffered a SIM card hijacking attack, possibly due to exposing his phone number when registering for Twitter Blue. He had previously seen recommendations against using phone numbers for identity verification but unfortunately did not realize it. Vitalik mentioned that he has uninstalled Twitter and joined Farcaster, where accounts can be recovered through Ethereum addresses.

Farcaster is a decentralized protocol for building social applications, which can be accessed through frontends like Opencast and Warpcast. Farcaster raised $30 million in 2022, led by a16z. This article will briefly analyze this decentralized social protocol favored by Vitalik and a16z.

Core Issues of Social Networks

Social network activities can be simply understood as a group of users interacting, such as sending messages (text, images, audio, etc.) to each other, liking, commenting, and sharing posts. In centralized social networks, this group of users can only interact within a specific social application, while in decentralized social networks, users from different applications will be allowed to interact across applications.

This also faces challenges, and Farcaster categorizes the four core issues of decentralized social networks as identity, authentication, availability, and consistency. Identity, or username, allows users to switch between different social applications and serve as their identity; authentication ensures that when a user receives a message from others, it must be verified as coming from a trusted source; availability means that user data is always accessible across different applications; consistency refers to the social network rules that all frontend applications must consistently support and enforce.

Farcaster's Solutions

The Farcaster social network encompasses three layers: identity layer, data layer, and application layer. The identity layer is based on Ethereum to determine the executable operations and authorization methods on the network, with identity and authentication as the core; the data layer stores information authorized by the identity layer and makes it available; the application layer consumes the information stored in the data layer.

(1) Identity: Farcaster ID (FID)

Farcaster introduces usernames and Farcaster ID (FID) for user social identities, where FID is a unique and tamper-proof identifier launched by Farcaster to mark user identities. The FID identifier is a string of numbers that binds to the user's main address. Although it is decentralized, using a numerical identifier to represent users is not appropriate, so users can choose to register a Farcaster name, i.e., a username, and bind it to their FID. Farcaster usernames are managed in a dedicated space called a namespace, where usernames may be reclaimed, but FIDs cannot.

Usernames and Farcaster IDs will be reflected in two different contracts on Ethereum: the name registry and the FID registry, which together constitute the foundation of Farcaster user identity.

It is worth mentioning that user identity recovery benefits from FID. Users can pre-set another address as a credential to recover their Farcaster identity; this other address can be another wallet address of the user, an address of another known Farcaster user, or even a third-party custodial entity.

(2) Authentication

Message authentication benefits from Farcaster ID. When a user receives a message, they can verify the true source of the message by checking the sender's FID, looking up the corresponding public key (address) on the Ethereum chain, and then confirming that the signature was generated by that address.

To protect users from private key issues on devices (private keys need to be loaded onto device applications to generate signatures), Farcaster introduces the concept of Signers. Signers are Ed25519 keys generated off-chain, and users register signers by using the signer's public key to transact with the KeyRegistry, after which the private key can be used to sign and publish messages to the network.

(3) Availability: Storage Leasing

In centralized social applications, users store information on servers similar to RSS servers and retrieve all data on the network by indexing all these servers. Farcaster introduces hubs for storing data, where different users download copies of each other's information during social interactions and store them.

However, to prevent spam from flooding the hubs, Farcaster charges users rent for storing data on the network, which is also a primary source of revenue for Farcaster. Users rent storage space by paying an annual fee to Farcaster, which can suppress spam and encourage users to clear out low-value data. Storage is managed and tracked on-chain by the StorageRegistry contract.

(4) Consistency

Farcaster is not a direct social application but a more foundational social protocol, similar to the relationship between Lens Protocol and Lenster. Currently, applications built on Farcaster include DAO-supported Web3 social application Alphacaster, content creation and sharing platform Discove, on-chain groups and personalized subscriptions Jam, open-source Twitter-style frontends Opencast and Warpcast, and social aggregators Yup that cross-post to Twitter and Lens. The Farcaster frontend used by Vitalik is Warpcast. In terms of usage logic, Warpcast is essentially similar to Twitter's core logic, allowing users to view wide-area posts in "world groups" and comment, share, and like posts (threads) from followed users.

Applications built on Farcaster provide consumption scenarios for data stored on hubs, with application servers communicating with hubs to download all information, organize and categorize this information to create applications tailored for different user experiences, and then provide APIs for users on different clients.

Applications built on Farcaster must adhere to Farcaster's rough consensus and operational code, which serves as Farcaster's governance model. When someone proposes a FIP (Farcaster Improvement Proposal), it must gain the approval of protocol developers, application developers, and users, and once the code is published, changes to Farcaster will occur. Different entities reach consensus through agreement or rejection. Farcaster does not set up binding voting procedures, nor does it have official roles with veto power.

Social Ecosystem Partners

Through Farcaster identity accounts, users can link to other applications or communities, including user alerts Alertcaster, Move-to-Earn Blobs, on-chain social activity previews Eventcaster, Farcaster ecosystem metrics tracking Farcaster Network, earning points by completing tasks FarQuest, messaging application Frens, Ethereum chain exploration Interface, decentralized hacker news Kiwi News, discovering the latest Web3 projects Launchcaster, personalized media sources Neynar, publishing and communication Paragraph, finding interesting topics Pincaster, DAO tools created by Nouns Builder Purple DAO, search engine Search via Raycast, API/GUI search Searchcaster, Farcaster community content exploration Surveycaster, tipping Tipcast, and token-driven real-time streaming Unlonely.

Currently, Farcaster is still in the beta phase, and users can submit to a waitlist. Both Farcaster and Lens Protocol serve as foundational protocols for building social networks, but compared to Lens Protocol, Farcaster is more focused on developers and application creation, staying further away from the user spotlight. As of mid-September, just before and after Vitalik announced using Farcaster, official data showed that Farcaster had just over 20,000 total users, with more than 3.8 million historical messages on hubs, and began filtering spam after migrating to Optimism to open up to more users. Although there has been no news regarding airdrop plans for Farcaster, it has already incorporated the FIP governance module as an important part of the protocol, making it worthwhile for users to experience and interact.

References

https://www.youtube.com/@farcasterxyz/videos

ChainCatcher reminds readers to view blockchain rationally, enhance risk awareness, and be cautious of various virtual token issuances and speculations. All content on this site is solely market information or related party opinions, and does not constitute any form of investment advice. If you find sensitive information in the content, please click "Report", and we will handle it promptly.
banner
ChainCatcher Building the Web3 world with innovators