- Crypto’s latest decentralised social media app has taken center stage as users are now busy trading Farcaster IDs.
- Early IDs have been eligible for various airdrops, likely driving trading activity.
- Farcaster is crypto Twitter’s main character these days, attracting interest from many crypto notables, including Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin.
Trading on Farmarket is booming, with users spending large on Farcaster IDs.
So far, the highest-selling FID on the Farcaster account marketplace earned the previous owner almost $7,000 in Ethereum.
Early joiners to Farcaster, an Optimism-based social media platform, claimed low FIDs — between one- to five-digit IDs. FIDs have now reached the six-digit level.
Farcaster IDs are displayed as digits, with lower digit IDs attracting higher bids. They are also NFTs that can be bought and sold.
Interest in low FIDs is likely tied to some Farcaster apps having started airdropping viral meme coins to low-digit FIDs. One token called DEGEN has already surged 800% since late January, CoinGecko data shows.
“I think this is a fad that will die soon, and [that] is why I immediately listed my ‘rare’ FID for a reasonable price — top sale at the moment for 3 ETH,” pseudonymous X user kcaz told DL News, referring to the hype around low FIDs.
They were the ones that sold the FID worth nearly $7,000, ID #4323.
Secondary markets all the way down
Launched in August 2022, the protocol has over 293,000 users from over 41,000 Ethereum wallets and has already attracted several notable crypto personalities, including Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin.
Speculative interest in low-digit crypto IDs is not a new phenomenon.
Low-digit Ethereum Name Service names have also sold for thousands of dollars in the past with 000.eth selling in July 2022 for 300 ETH, worth $315,000 at the time.
As was the case for digit-ENS domains, tiered floor prices have also emerged for FIDs based on how low they are. The floor price is the lowest offer for an NFT and can be used to calculate the minimum value of an NFT collection.
FIDs lower than 20,000 currently have a floor price of a few hundred dollars, Farmarket data shows.
Farcaster on the rise
The speculative FID trend comes amid a broader increase in Farcaster adoption metrics.
The protocol’s daily active user count soared 400% last week, coinciding with the protocol’s launch of Frames — a feature letting users turn social posts on Warpcast into mini-apps for use cases like NFTs and gaming.
Warpcast is one of the many apps built atop the Farcaster protocol. Many are touted as decentralised alternatives to popular web2 social media platforms. Warpcast is similar to X, formerly Twitter. Fancord resembles Discord.
While Farcaster has enjoyed soaring metrics, its competition struggles to maintain pace.
Friend.tech, last year’s dominant SocialFi protocol, has seen its user numbers plummet 96% from its peak in September.
“Bad gamefi is using financial speculation as a substitute for fun,” tweeted Buterin, responding to commentary on Friend.tech’s recent drop in user activity. “I believe a similar thing for crypto social.”
The Ethereum co-creator predicted that Farcaster, along with another web3 media protocol Lens, “will not be deserted in 4 months, or 1 year.”
Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. To share tips or information about stories, please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.
