"Kind Strangers on the Internet" - ZEROPOD Ep. 16 with Dan Romero aka DWR, founder of Farcaster

Nov 7 2023

On Episode 16 of ZEROPOD, Toady Hawk and Prof Werder sit down with Dan Romero aka @ dwr, founder of Farcaster. We talk about his Coinbase origins, his days as a Twitter API dev, and why he and his co-founder chose to tackle the important problem of Decentralized Social. We also talk about Nouns, Network States, permissionless proliferation and so much more. This was an awesome conversation and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did-- Please LIKE, COMMENT and SUBSCRIBE if you do!

Timestamps:

00:00 - Nouns as a great example of decentralized governance
01:54 - ZEROPOD Intro
02:45 - Early career on the West Coast, discovery of Bitcoin and Ethereum
04:28 - Thinking about moving Twitter onto a protocol, Paul Graham essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/twitter.html
05:15 - RSS to RSS+
06:00 - Why tackle decentralized social media?
06:28 - History as Twitter API dev, Strawpoll creation
07:59 - Social networking vs Social MEDIA
10:45 - Farcaster the protocol vs Warpcaster the app + The Power of Channels
12:26 - Balaji’s Network State, the power of onchain networks and pseudonymous
15:15 - Network State can be a charged term - Need better retail packaging
17:08 - Kind Internet Strangers
20:00 - Walking the Decentralized Talk
21:34 - The airdrop is the friends we made along the way
22:38 - The value of owning your social network (immunity to deplatforming)
23:03 - Vitalik as an example of someone who walks the walk
25:00 - Future integrations of podcasts into Farcaster?
28:32 - Apps should be opinionated and focused
29:00- Build things you are passionate about
31:17 - A Permissionless milestone for Farcaster: Importance of building culture early, and the novelty of permissionless interaction with the protocol.
36:27 - You own the relationship wth your network.
36:42 - Setting norms on Warpcaster: Building a culture
40:00 - “Good” is Not Great.
42:00 - Freedom of choice of client
42:50 - Flink example: https://flink.fyi/
44:46 - “The decentralized approach of Nouns is inspirational to me.”
47:33 - “Why didn’t your fork your noun?” (In it for the meme!)
49:40 - The importance of taking a 10 year horizon on investments you believe in
51:38 - Let memetic compounding happen
52:41 - Almost the Purple Patricio
53:05 - Purple DAO
57:35 - The Grateful Dead as an example of permissionless proliferation
59:00 - Ethereum and Bitcoin as decentralized brands
1:00:00 - Community Questions - Noun40 question about community curation of channels
1:06:00 - Dustmartn question 1: What Superpower?. Question 2: Why will people still be using Forecaster in 10 years?
1:07:00 - “Farcaster is default dead right now”
1:10:00 - Why should someone join Farcaster?
1:15:00 - Outro

Podcast recorded by Toady Hawk, edited by Toady Hawk and JackWyldes. Hosted by Toady Hawk and Prof Werder. Music by SuperTightWoody.

Zero Rights Reserved, please remix and reuse our content in any way you like!

Produced by The Noun Square onchain media collective. Follow @thenounsquare on Twitter for daily content about Nouns, NFTs, Ethereum and more or visit https://tns.wtf to learn more about us.