Farcaster Snapchain

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This week, Farcaster founder Dan Romero laid out the onchain social network's current priorities in a short tweet.

However, one priority here particularly stuck out: "Build and migrate to Snapchain to scale the protocol."

This tweet is all we have to go off for now, but the hinting suggests a big shift is coming for the social network.

Of course, I think it's safe to assume that Snapchain will be a bespoke Layer 2 solution of some sort that the Farcaster team deploys to better handle more users and activity in the years ahead.

We recently saw Lens unveil its own social infra L2, and Farcaster is now seemingly cooking up something similar to power its development goals going forward.

It's not surprising, either. L2s make transactions fast and cheap, but they also open up a "blank canvas" design space for projects to bake unique features right into the network's base layer. Farcaster can tap these dynamics to unlock new possibilities for its users.

For example, imagine microtransactions for user-generated content, super seamless tokenized tipping, or even better composability with DeFi and NFT projects. New kinds of onchain social economies could be on the horizon accordingly.

That said, in improving scalability, Snapchain should also bolster Farcaster's other pillars (Frames, channels, etc.) and help them shine even more. Better performance can win over more users, and more users generate more interesting activity, and that activity can bring in even more users, 'round and 'round.

For now the exact nature of Snapchain remains under wraps, but it's a big thread to watch going forward in the Ethereum ecosystem, and its success could ripple beyond just the Farcaster protocol. Will Snapchain remain Farcaster-exclusive or become a broader infra lego? Only time will tell, but either way keep your eyes peeled here!

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