Farcaster developer eyeing unicorn valuation as user activity spikes: Bloomberg
Quick Take
- The developers of popular Web3 social media protocol Farcaster and its client Warpcast are raising a new round that would value the company at over $1 billion, according to a report in Bloomberg.
- Daily posts and reactions on Farcaster have nearly doubled in the past week to reach all-time highs, according to The Block’s data.
As daily activity on Farcaster, the breakout Web3 social media service, rockets higher and higher, its developers are reportedly seeking fresh capital.
Merkle Manufactory, the Web3 social media firm behind the Farcaster social network and its Warpcast client, is nearing completion of a funding round led by crypto VC Paradigm that would grant the company unicorn status with a valuation of over $1 billion, according to a report in Bloomberg.
Farcaster, which runs on Ethereum and OP Mainnet as well as Farcaster's off-chain system of peer-to-peer servers called Hubs, has attracted tens of thousands of users, including high-profile figures in the world of crypto. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has been active on the network, calling it "better in many ways" than X.
In fact, daily posts, known as casts, and reactions on Farcaster have nearly doubled in the past week to reach their all-time highs, according to The Block's data dashboard. The peak in activity comes some time after daily active users peaked in early February following the introduction of the Frames feature, suggesting that users who tried out the network and stuck around have become more active.
While Farcaster is currently seeing much greater daily activity than Web3 social network competitor FriendTech, FriendTech has proven to be far more profitable; its developers have raked in over $28 million in cumulative fees since launch compared to Farcaster's $850,000 in revenue.
The most popular client for Farcaster, Warpcast, is also developed by Merkle Manufactory, though as a decentralized service, other competing clients exist to interact with the Farcaster protocol. Merkle, which was founded by former Coinbase executives Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, last raised $30 million in July, 2022 in a round led by a16z crypto.
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