Farcaster 2.0 is an Optimism-based protocol for building decentralized social networking applications

Overview

Farcaster is a decentralized protocol designed specifically for building and connecting social apps. It aims to create a censorship-free environment where users have full control over their data and audience. To achieve this, Farcaster employs a sufficiently decentralized network architecture that lets users control their social graph and enables them to interact with various apps on the network via a single identity. 
On January 26, 2024, daily active users on Farcaster surged following the launch of a new feature, Frames. Frames effectively turns Farcaster-based posts into interactive mini-apps, allowing users to mint NFTs, play games, and use instant checkouts directly from their social feed without leaving the platform.

History

Farcaster was co-founded by Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan in 2020. Before co-founding Farcaster, Romero and Srinivasan worked together at Coinbase for about five years between 2015 and 2019. According to Crunchbase, Farcaster received an undisclosed seed round investment from venture firm Archetype in January 2023. 
Farcaster was initially built on top of Ethereum, but was later migrated to Layer 2 network Optimism in August 2023. Co-founder Romero reasoned that most of Farcaster’s active users and developers were building on Optimism.

Technology

2.0Farcaster employs a hybrid architecture that stores user identity information on-chain while storing data on posts and interactions off-chain.
The protocol’s on-chain system is secured using smart contracts on the Optimism mainnet. The primary actions that are performed on-chain are:

• Creating an account
• Paying rent to store data
• Adding account keys (or giving permission) to connected apps

Farcaster’s off-chain system comprises a peer-to-peer (P2P) network of servers called Hubs that store user data. The user actions that are performed off-chain include:

• Posting a public message
• Following another user
• Reacting to a post
• Updating your profile picture
• what a dapp^[1]

Website link: ^[16]
docs: ^[17]