#钱包社交转型 I was a bit shocked to see the news that Farcaster has given up on its social dreams and is turning to Wallets 😅 Five years, invested 180 million dollars, and the valuation is almost reaching 1 billion, yet still couldn't realize the dream of a "Decentralization Twitter"...

It wasn't until I looked closely at the data that I understood why. At the beginning of 2024, it indeed became popular, with daily active users rising from 2000 to 100,000, but just three months later, it started to plummet, and now the monthly active users are only around 20,000. Moreover, once the Wallet feature was launched, user stickiness actually became stronger? This is a bit counterintuitive.

It feels like this: social interaction requires network effects, but Farcaster has always been confined to the crypto circle, and the content is all about cryptocurrencies that ordinary users cannot understand or are not interested in. On the contrary, tools like Wallet are something that everyone has a real need for—transfers, transactions, signatures—these are all rigid on-chain behaviors.

It's a bit regrettable because I was quite looking forward to having a social network that isn't censored by a centralized platform. But from a business perspective, it is indeed easier to add social features to a Wallet rather than the other way around. One point that bothers me is whether this shift means becoming a "trader" instead of a "user"? It feels like the atmosphere would be completely different.

But thinking about it, since social interaction is so difficult, let's first use the Wallet tool to retain people, and maybe there will be room for social functions later?