Farcaster is the decentralized social media app that everyone’s talking about, and for good reason! Originally launched as Warpcast, a client on the Farcaster protocol, Farcaster saw a huge spike in interest around Frames, the precursor to today's Mini Apps, which pioneered interactions with Web3 directly from your feed. 

The onchain capabilities of Mini Apps has been expanding every day with new apps built around minting NFTs, shopping experiences, token swaps, lottery tickets, and a whole metaverse more.

What is Farcaster?

Farcaster is a decentralized social media app built on the protocol of the same name, which launched in 2021. Built on top of the protocol is an ecosystem of apps and clients that redefine social media to give the creator rights to their content. 

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.

The Base app, launched in July 2025, plugs directly into the Farcaster protocol to create an onchain experience built around a wallet, with a social media feed and Mini Apps built around everything from finance to games.

What is Farcaster?

The Farcaster app is a decentralized Twitter alternative built on Farcaster, that recently exploded in popularity thanks to its innovative feature, Frames. The app 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. Mini Apps are simple applications that let you perform onchain tasks without leaving Farcaster.

Follow Matcha on Farcaster!

Farcaster 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 Farcaster account

Getting started on Farcaster 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 small fee to pay, which covers onchain platform fees such as cast storage. You will also need to link an email address to verify your Farcaster 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 Farcaster 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 Farcaster

To get the most out of Farcaster, 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 Farcaster wallet in the and fund it with only a small amount of Ether. There are many experimental features on Farcaster and developers are testing the limits every day. One early 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.

Creating a Farcaster wallet is free and only takes a few seconds, so you can change which address you use depending on what you need to do.

Mini Apps and Frames

Mini Apps are at the centre of Farcaster's latest form. They allow you to use your favorite DeFi platforms, play games, and discover a world of crypto-native projects directly from your Farcaster app.

Add the Matcha Mini App to Farcaster

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

Frames could check that qualifying criteria is met before allowing a user to proceed, including 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 on Farcaster. 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.

Degen tips

Degen is a channel on Farcaster 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 became the most popular token on Farcaster for tipping, as eligible users got a daily token allowance which they could send to other users by commenting a number followed by $DEGEN. For example, commenting “100 $DEGEN” under a post would award the person 100 Degen tokens from your daily allowance.

Need Degen tokens? Get yours on Matcha!

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

Warps 

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

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 Farcaster, 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.

What wallet should I use for Farcaster on Mobile?

Farcaster now has its own app that handles both Ethereum networks and Solana. Most other crypto wallets should work with Farcaster, but the experience is much improved by confirming transactions within the app. The Base App also has a built-in smart wallet. If you already have a Farcaster account and set up a new wallet in The Base App, you can connect your existing profile but will not have access to the funds and will not be able to trade on Solana.

Whichever wallet you use, it is good practice to have a new address to use for Farcaster 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 Mini Apps, it is best to keep your main funds isolated in a hardware wallet and only connect fresh addresses to Farcaster.

Where Web3 communicates

The Farcaster ecosystem has succeeded in sparking a monumental shift for decentralized social media. With unprecedented user growth sparked by Frames, Farcaster has retained a healthy and vibrant community. 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!