Farcaster $1 Billion Valuation

📢 Sponsor | 💡 Telegram | 📰 Past Editions

Good Morning.

This week will be eventful. Ethena and Wormhole are launching their tokens, base joins the meme meta with degen L3, and Solana continues its strength with WIF hitting ATH over the weekend.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: Farcaster’s $1B Valuation 🦄 

• Product: Cobie’s Echo 🔊

• Charts: Farcaster growth, Blobscriptions 📈

You read and share. We listen and improve. Send us feedback at [email protected].

WHAT MATTERS

Farcaster Dev Nears Unicorn Status

State of play: Merkle Manufactory, the company behind Farcaster and Warpcast is nearing completion of a new funding round led by Paradigm that will make the company a unicorn, according to Bloomberg.

• Dan Romero, former VP at Coinbase and Merkle co-founder, confirmed on Warpcast that Merkle is fundraising but did not disclose the amount.

• Further comments on the valuation were declined by Romero and Paradigm.

• Merkle previously secured a $30M funding in July 2022 in a round led by a16z Crypto.

• Farcaster's daily active users surged to over 50,000 in early February from under 10,000 a month earlier, per The Block Research data.

• Farcaster has higher daily activity than FriendTech, but FriendTech is more profitable, earning over $28M in fees since launch, versus Farcaster's $850,000 in revenue.

What’s next: Farcaster is aiming to reach a billion daily active users. Currently, Farcaster has a total of 260,000 users, according to @pixelhack’s Dune dashboard.

Our take: It has yet to be seen how these protocols will justify their valuation as web2 social media largely rely on advertising money.

For builders and investors: Integrating a stronger business model into your DeSo platforms that can capitalize on speculation is a key short-term strategy to drive up revenue. (read: consumer apps as exchanges)

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 500 crypto VC individuals 👇

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

Cobie’s Angel Investor Platform, Echo

Prominent crypto trader Cobie a.k.a Jordan Fish has begun beta-testing his new crypto angel investor platform called Echo.

• The platform will enable crypto investors to form groups for collective investments in crypto projects.

• Echo is aiming to unify the traditionally fragmented angel investment space in crypto.

• Cobie tweeted that Echo is open only for self-certified sophisticated investors. The platform is in invite-only mode, with emails sent to early adopters starting March 28.

• Echo may apply regional regulations. For instance, rules for Singapore residents differ from those in Japan, as Fish explained on X.

• Echo users finalized their first deal, a $300,000 investment in Ethena's "synthetic dollar" protocol, within just three hours.

Other cool products:

• Planck, an AI Compute DePIN.

• CoinPays, a crypto payment gateway.

• CoinMath, a gateway to seamless crypto mining.

• UnTrade, an Algo Trading and AI Crypto Trading Bot.

• Codigo, a blockchain development lifecycle automation.

CHARTS OF THE WEEK

6,100+ Channels in Farcaster

Credits to OurNetwork for the original report

State of play: Since June 2023, over 6,100 channels have been created by Farcaster users, with 80% of weekly casts occurring within these channels.

• Users typically cast in 8 channels, but 21% don't use any, and nearly 19% are active in 10+ channels.

• Popular channels on Farcaster include /base, /degen, /ethereum, /memes, and /founders.

• Crypto-related channels are still leading in the number of followers.

• Farcaster has seen over 8,600 videos shared, with a weekly average of 958 uploads. Currently, 1,396 unique users have shared videos.

• In the last 14 days, Farcaster has had more than 73,000 active users.

Our take: DeSo might find its ground by being the place where people discuss memes and speculations — FriendTech got this with “keys”, Farcaster got it with Degens.

Ethereum Faces Stress Test with 'Blobscriptions'

State of play: Ethereum gas fees soared on Wednesday due to Ethscriptions introducing 'blobscriptions' for data inscription on blobs.

• The blob base fee spiked to 582 gwei ($266) on Wednesday but dropped to 18 gwei ($8.69) by Thursday.

• Vitalik Buterin said in a Thursday blog post that the Blobscriptions incident led to "price discovery" for blob fees.

• But Vitalik noted that the data fees are still cheaper than the old system of using "calldata" in Ethereum transactions.

Our take: When there’s a space to store more data onchain, it would eventually be capitalize (or exploited) in one way or another.

QUICK BITES

• Bitfinex resolves platform outage.

• Base tx and DEX volumes surge to new all-time highs.

• Mark Yusko predicts $150,000 BTC by the end of 2024.

• FTX aims to begin repaying creditors by the end of 2024.

• Polygon Labs CEO criticizes Ethereum layer 3 networks.

• Liquid restaking platforms jump to nearly $8 billion in TVL.

• Prisma Finance hacker defends exploit, demands public apology.

• Telegram enables Toncoin payments for in-platform ad purchases.

• Custodia Bank loses lawsuit challenging Fed rejection of master account application.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

• oLGHT’s read on left-curving DAOs.

• Matti’s read on but they won’t trap me.

• 0xMinion’s read on he hates the points program so much.

If you enjoy reading this issue, please consider subscribing. It takes 1 minute of your time but it would mean the world to us 🙇

Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.