Warpcast is the decentralized social media app that everyone’s talking about, and for good reason! Built on the Farcaster protocol, Warpcast has been around for a while but saw a huge spike in interest with the innovation of Frames, a new way to interact with Web3 directly from your feed. 

The onchain capabilities of Frames has been expanding every day, with hackathons around the world spitting out new concepts like minting NFTs, in-feed shopping experiences, token swaps, lottery tickets, and a whole metaverse more.

What is Farcaster?

Farcaster is a decentralized media protocol that launched in 2021. Built on top of Farcaster is an ecosystem of apps which take on incumbent media platforms like Twitter, Medium, Mailchimp, Spotify and more, in a decentralized manner. 

The Farcaster protocol is designed to allow app developers to enable their users to publish blogs, videos, status updates, audio recordings, and newsletters that they retain control over in perpetuity.

What is Warpcast?

Warpcast is a decentralized Twitter alternative built on Farcaster, that recently exploded in popularity thanks to its innovative feature, Frames. Warpcast lets users post messages (called casts), images and videos on a feed for others to interact with, and also uses Channels to let users post their tweet to a specific category or community for broader reach. 

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Warpcast is available both on Mobile and Desktop, and you can easily connect logins between the two using a QR code and connected wallets. Your Farcaster account can also be used to authenticate logins for other apps across Web3.

Setting up a Warpcast account

Getting started on Farcaster using Warpcast is fairly straightforward if you’ve set up a crypto wallet before. You will be given a 24-word seed phrase that generates the keys to your account. When you first sign up there is a $5 fee to pay, which covers onchain platform fees such as cast storage. You will also need to link an email address to verify your Warpcast account.

Once you’ve completed the initial seed generation and account payment, you can choose a username and continue to set up your profile. Note that Warpcast usernames cannot be changed once set, so choose wisely! 

Posting a message, called a Cast, costs less than $0.01 and is covered by the initial signup allowance. Each user is allocated a limited amount of storage for 5000 casts, 2500 reactions and 2500 follows in the price. More storage can be purchased separately. 

Connecting a wallet address to Warpcast

To get the most out of Warpcast, you will want to connect a crypto wallet address to it. This is done by opening the Settings menu and selecting Connected addresses, then clicking on Connect an address, and signing a message from your wallet. 

For your security, you should set up a new address for Warpcast and fund it with only a small amount of Ether. There are many experimental features on Warpcast and developers are testing the limits every day. One dev created a Frame explicitly stating it would drain the wallet of anyone who interacted with it, while another created SnowCrash, an NFT that makes all NFTs in an account unviewable.

Connecting and disconnecting wallets is free and only takes a few seconds, so you can change which address you use depending on what you need to do. This has been exploited to get around Frame limits and repeatedly mint NFTs that are limited to one per wallet.  

Frames on Warpcast

Frames are the innovative feature that has brought hundreds of thousands of new accounts to Warpcast in 2024. Displayed as a slideshow with primitive buttons, users can make decisions that influence the next slide they are shown. 

Frames can check that qualifying criteria is met before allowing a user to proceed, which may include platform-centric activity such as liking or recasting a post or following a caster, or onchain activity such as holding a particular NFT or ERC-20 token, or trading a certain amount on a platform like Matcha.

Prior to launching frames, there were approximately 2,000 daily active users. Within a week, that number was 20,000, and there are now over 60,000 daily users from a total of 800,000 total users set up on Farcaster with more growth expected. The number of daily casts increased by more than 1000% with Frames, and currently sits at around 50,000 casts and 500,000 reactions each day.

Example Frames

The pace of development of Frames makes it difficult to offer an exhaustive list of what to try. For a broad overview of what’s going on, keep an eye on the Awesome Frames Github page which attempts to track all the most interesting projects that have launched. Below are a few examples of how Frames have been used.

Create Frames with no code!

BaseQuest

A choose-your-own-adventure launched by Base network that uses AI to build an in-frame fantasy world where you choose how to proceed. When you begin, you mint an NFT that records your characters progress with each decision you make. 

Farcastles

A community game with a simple premise: users attack a castle to the North or South by casting a message in the form "!attack (direction)". Scores are kept by a bot. That's it.

NFT projects

NFTs play multiple roles on Warpcast: as collectibles mintable directly from your feed, as prerequisites for interacting with frames, as redeemable objects for promo campaigns, and can even be minted based on the choices you make within a frame. 

Here are just a handful of examples: 

• MYK Bois: Create your own custom PFP (profile picture) NFT using a Frame.
• Mint A Penny: Mint an image of a penny and redeem it for a Base cap (sold out).
• Outcasts: An AI-generated manga style collection limited to 400 characters reading books.
• Ciniz: A collection of daily NFTs celebrating Warpcast meme culture.
• Red envelopes: Celebrating the Lunar New Year with Coinbase Wallet, anyone who used this frame to send a $5 USDC transaction via text message link got  an NFT.

Polls

Create a poll that users can interact with to respond, recording answers in an immutable way. 

Hypersub newsletter subscriptions

Hypersub is a Web3 project that takes newsletters onchain. Subscribers pay a monthly fee to receive airdrops from a particular creator, entitling them to art drops, writings, and other content, sirect to their wallet.

Powerbald lottery

The Powerbald lottery lets Warpcast users mint a lottery ticket each day, for a chance to win Degen tokens.

Degen tips

Degen is a channel on Warpcast dedicated to degen culture. The Degen channel launched a token airdrop in February 2024, drawing a large wave of attention, followed by announcing a second airdrop which is now a regular occurrence. 

Degen has become the most popular token on Warcast for tipping, as eligible users get a daily token allowance which they can send to other Warpcast users by commenting a number followed by $DEGEN. For example, commenting “100 $DEGEN” under a post you like will award the person 100 Degen tokens from your daily allowance.

Need Degen tokens? Get yours on Matcha!

Unused Degen tokens are destroyed if not used, incentivizing users to spend them all and helping to spread visibility of the project.

How to be eligible for Degen 

To become eligible for a daily Degen token tip allowance, you must first be active on Warpcast with a wallet connected and an account over 24 hours old and have posted at least 3 casts. There may be a delay of 24 hours before receiving your tip allowance. 

The size of your tip allocation is influenced by various factors including how your casts are received by the Warpcast audience. Note that the mechanics used to distribute Degen have changed many times throughout 2024, most recently through adding a staking mechanic, where your allocation is determined by your staked amount.

Checking your Degen tip balance

To stake Degen, see your current Degen daily allowance for tipping in Warpcast, and claim any Degen you have earner in the latest season, you will need to visit the Airdrop page at degen.tips/airdrop2/current and connect your wallet. Please note that this is a third party site and its security cannot be guaranteed. 

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Warps 

Warps are the primary currency used by Warpcast. They can be gifted to other casters by clicking on the Gift Warps button under a cast, and more recently have been leveraged to allow one-click minting through Frames. Warps are not onchain tokens and function more like points. 

Warps can be earned through being active on Warpcast and rewarded to node operators. If you need Warps but don’t qualify for any distribution, you can buy them with your bank card using conventional fiat money or with crypto through a link provided by a relevant Frame.

Cast actions

Cast actions are a feature that allow developers to create custom shortcuts for specific tasks. They are still in the process of gaining wider adoption, but there are already some interesting examples which you can install and try for yourself.

To add a cast action to Warpcast, click on the Actions button, which you will find next to the Bookmarks button in any post on your feed. Then, select Discover Actions to see a list of available apps.

See something you like? Select it then click Add Action to add it to your list. When you want to use it, just click the Actions button in your feed again for quick access.

Up to six Actions can be installed at one time. Some are useful, letting you hide posts, set reminders, or check if a profile is likely to be a bot. Others are fun, letting you tip various memecoins, play games like hot potato, or engage with specific Farcaster-native apps!

What wallet should I use for Warpcast on Mobile?

Most crypto wallets should work with Warpcast, but my personal experience has been that Rainbow wallet, Zerion and Coinbase Wallet are the most responsive. Other wallets also work within the Warpcast ecosystem but may fail to fetch messages when switching from Warpcast to sign a transaction, and those mentioned before usually capture the transaction instead if installed alongside it.

Whichever wallet you use, it is good practice to create a new address to use for Warpcast and fund it with only the amount of crypto you plan to use. With the rising popularity of the app, there are greater incentives to find exploits or develop scams targeting Farcaster users. 

Combined with the novelty and onchain capabilities of Frames, it is best to keep your main funds isolated in a hardware wallet and only connect fresh addresses to Warpcast.

Where Web3 communicates

Warpcast and the broader Farcaster ecosystem have succeeded in sparking a monumental shift away from centralized social media. With unprecedented user growth sparked by Frames, you will find that Warpcast has a healthy and vibrant community with significantly less spam than platforms like X (Twitter).

Alternative social media often turns into an echo chamber, but that has not been the case for Farcaster so far, and instead many Web3 opinion-leaders will be seen posting to Farcaster as an alternative to Twitter. Join Farcaster today by downloading the app and following the steps above, and don't forget to subscribe to the Matcha channel for all the latest news, memes, and onchain giveaways!