To a large extent, I believe Farcaster's success as a protocol and ecosystem will be measured by another successful app outsourcing its social graph to the protocol. While Warpcast already uses it, being developed by the same team only proves it can be done, not that others want to. I wonder if given a second chance, they'd even use it themselves.
Success would be an application attracting non-Farcaster users without them realizing they now have a Farcaster profile. Many applications use Farcaster login to access quality daily active users. However, the real proof would be an application with a broader or different user base choosing Farcaster as their user datastore.
Creating an account on such an app would generate an FID in the background, without requiring a Warpcast account first (Supercast already offers this - try their account creation flow to see the future). The app would then choose how much of their social graph to outsource to Farcaster and what to keep in-house.
But why would others want to outsource their graph to Farcaster?
The main benefits I see:
• Faster shipping: Using the protocol saves time that would have been spent creating a backend for users and relationships. You can focus on app-level iteration and quickly find a resonating proposition (similar to Warpcast's approach with direct casts and channels).
• Emerging behaviors: For early-stage companies, being at the technology and ideas frontier matters. The Farcaster team and ecosystem are arguably the closest thing we have to a frontier in crypto currently.
• Upside potential: Using Farcaster reduces friction for existing users, potentially benefiting from easier discovery and onboarding if large user inflows occur to Farcaster through Warpcast or any other successful apps using the protocol.
There are some tradeoffs, though:
• Restricted design freedom: Not fully controlling the backend might limit product design. However, the protocol is not very opinionated, allowing much logic to be implemented at the app level, and constraints are known to foster creativity.
• Protocol risk: As with any platform, you face execution and timing risks. While I'm not overly concerned about these for Farcaster given the team, I'd advise against using the protocol if you a) have important features dependent on future protocol changes, or b) rely on the protocol not building features unique to your product.
I think that for most applications building consumer products it makes a lot of sense to do it. I think the benefits outweighs the cons for most. I like how the Merkle Factory team has been relentlessly focusing on building a great consumer experience - my hope is that they keep making the protocol a great place for others to do so, because I'm of the opinion it's the fastest way for the ecosystem to grow and keep being the frontier.