Daily active users on Farcaster surge to all-time high, driven by Frames launch

Daily active users on the Ethereum Layer 2 Optimism-based decentralized social protocol Farcaster have surged nearly tenfold to record highs since the launch of embedded mini-apps called Frames.

Daily unique casters — users who post content on Farcaster-based social apps like Warpcast — jumped from around 2,400 on January 25, the day before Frames launched, to 19,100 on Saturday, according to The Block’s data dashboard. Daily unique reactors, or those who engage with content, went from roughly 2,700 to 25,000 over the same period.

Growth in overall Farcaster casts and reactions has been even more pronounced, surging from 11,000 to 127,000 and 29,000 to 514,000 between Jan. 25 and Feb. 3, respectively.

Daily revenue for the protocol has also hit all-time highs as a result, up nearly 1,500% from $2,500 on Jan. 25 to over $39,000 as of yesterday. Cumulative protocol revenue currently stands at just under $450,000 since it launched in August 2022.

Farcaster was co-founded by former Coinbase executives Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, providing Ethereum wallet users with a censorship-resistant solution to take control over their own social media data and port it across decentralized apps in its ecosystem. X-like Warpcast is the largest app built on the protocol, representing 45% of Farcaster signups.

The Farcaster ecosystem has over 5 million unique follows, 6 million reactions, and 2.8 million casts according to Romero, mappable to 30,000 Ethereum addresses on-chain. Well-known users like Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin have used the protocol for some time, while others like Uniswap inventor Hayden Adams and crypto influencer Jordan Fish, aka Cobie, joined more recently.

Frames launch behind activity surge

Farcaster introduced Frames on Jan. 26, effectively turning Farcaster-based posts, like tweets on X, into interactive mini-apps. For example, users can mint NFTs, play games and use instant checkouts directly from their social feed without leaving the platform.

Frames are powered by Farcaster’s EdDSA authentication system — meaning there’s no wallet drain risk — and as it's cryptographically signed, it’s not spoofable either, according to Romero. However, the surge in activity following Frames’ launch led to huge traffic spikes, temporarily degrading performance on Warpcast, Romero said yesterday.

The surge of interest in Farcaster comes at a time when activity on other SocialFi platforms like Friend.Tech are down significantly from their peaks. Daily transactions on Friend.Tech have fallen 96% from a peak of 540,000 in September to 20,000 yesterday, according to The Block’s data dashboard. While the incentive structures are different, it remains to be seen if the latest hype surrounding Farcaster is sustainable in the long term.

Farcaster-related NFTs and tokens also rise

For now, the Farcaster fear of missing out is real, with related NFTs and tokens also benefiting from the surge in activity.

The Farcaster OG NFT — something of a status symbol for early adopters of the protocol — has seen its floor price rise over 250% from 0.69 ETH to 2.54 ETH ($5,900) over the past week, according to data from the NFT marketplace OpenSea. Another Farcaster-linked NFT collection, Farcats, has risen over 650% from 0.09 ETH to 0.69 ETH ($1,600) during the same period.

Meanwhile, DEGEN — an airdropped ERC-20 token initiated by the Degen community in the Base and Farcaster ecosystems — has surged around 800% from $0.00028 to $0.0025 since Jan. 29, according to CoinGecko.

DEGEN/USD price chart. Image: CoinGecko.

The Block has reached out to the Farcaster team for comment.