Can creators leverage the Farcaster ecosystem to their advantage? What are some of the emerging trends and tools taking root there? That’s what Humpty and Pichi discussed across six episodes in the Creators Take Action podcast series.

I’ve taken some time to go through the series and extracted a few highlights for you.

My top episodes were:

• Episode 3: Humpty and Pichi go through the current drawbacks of how Moxie incentives are designed, incentivizing farming.

• Episode 4: They describe @samantha’s approach to building her creator business on Farcaster by establishing genuine connections with the community and receiving support in return.

Episode 1: Thriving in the New Creator Economy

In this episode, Humpty and Pichi discuss creator tools, contributor rewards, content strategies, and algorithm dynamics.

Key Takeaways

Foot for thought - Web3 implies volatility: Even more than in traditional creator markets, market downturns and price action highly impact engagement on Farcaster, leading to reduced activity.

Tip - Using group chats: One high-leverage tool right now is simply using Warpcast group chats to deepen connections and boost engagement around your content.

Tool - Rounds.wtf: Rounds is a great tool to increase engagement in a given Farcaster channel. Make sure that rules are clear to encourage participation.

Tip - Cross-channel collaborations: Rewarding specific communities through collaborations, like discounts for multi-channel subscribers, can help promote growth.

Tool - Stack.so: Stack.so lets creators set up a point system to retroactively reward community contributions.

Tip - Farcaster algorithm: Balancing content quality and quantity is vital. Older accounts on Farcaster tend to get algorithmic preference. This makes it harder to measure contributions by different community members. Turning off priority mode on Warpcast improves conversation visibility, which can help, but increases spam.

Episode 2: Introducing Fan Tokens for the New Creator Economy with Moxie

Humpty and Pichi discuss the creator economy, focusing on the launch of Moxie within Farcaster, which aims to boost community engagement and creator monetization through fan tokens.

Key Takeaways

Foot for thought - Shifting creator economy: Farcaster is an experiment in putting content on-chain and having the value created flow back to the content creator.

Tool - Moxie protocol: Moxie allocates tokens to Farcaster users based on the engagement they get from reputable members of the network. Moxie launched with an airdrop to 53,000 Farcaster members to ensure widespread participation.

Tool - Moxie fan token: Moxie tokens can be bought to support creators and invest in their success.

Foot for thought - Utility over speculation: Fan tokens should offer utility and community support, not just speculative value.

Episode 3: The Potential Pitfalls of Fan Tokens in the New Creator Economy

In this episode, Humpty and Pichi explore some of the drawbacks of the current Moxie design and fan tokens in general.

Foot for thought - Moxie & speculation: Moxie is perceived as focusing too much on speculation rather than prominently displaying the rewards mechanism for creators.

Foot for thought - Moxie’s UX: It can be hard to navigate the Airstack platform without spending significant time exploring. The learning curve is steep: custodial wallets, frames, Moxie economics, etc.

Foot for thought - Moxie reputation score: Farscores, calculated by Airstack, are a proxy for reputation and influence on Farcaster. They are highly influenced by interactions with high-reputation accounts, which can incentivize spamming.

Tool - Buoy for search: Buoy is an advanced search engine for Farcaster power users and professionals. It helps creators keep track of conversations they want to engage with more effectively.

Foot for thought - Disabling Moxie: Some creators, like @samantha, have expressed a desire to disable Moxie to discourage engagement farming with their content. There’s no follow-up yet, but genuine engagement is seen as something to protect by some creators. The opposite can discourage them from sharing their work.

Episode 4: Creating Seamless Customer Experiences in the New Creator Economy - The Story of Samantha

Cryptosapiens recap available here

Key Takeaways

Foot for thought - How Samantha created her business: Samantha was fed up with her Web2 job and turned her love for candles into a brand called ‘Humankind’. She evolved her technique over time, moving from purchasing low-quality candles to starting her own dual-layered candle business, using technology for distribution and improvement.

Tools - Samantha’s tech stack: Samantha uses Shopify, Klaviyo, Notion, and Hypersub in addition to Farcaster clients, focusing on intuitive tools that fit her workflow while avoiding a complicated tech stack.

Tip - Real-life meetups: She values the Farcaster community for its feedback culture and emphasizes real-life meetups for deeper connections.

Episode 5: The Future of the Attention Economy in Web3 - Meetups and Meetup Tooling

In this episode the hosts discuss meetups both online and IRL.

Key takeways

Tip - Meetups: 'Farcaster Fridays' are IRL meetups that can be valuable for fostering collaboration and building community.

Tool - Tavern vs Farhouse: Tavern is more user-friendly and accessible compared to Farhouse, which requires an app download and invite code. Tavern’s soundboards and closed captioning improve the experience, especially for non-native English speakers and those with hearing impairments.

Tool - Farhouse: Introducing rewards into Farhouse could increase user engagement and interactivity.

Foot for thought - Story Protocol: Story Protocol, with $80 million in funding, aims to help creators protect their intellectual property on a blockchain. Tracking unauthorized IP use, especially with AI, is difficult, highlighting the need for updated IP laws.

Episode 6: With Brennen Peters from Tavern

In this final episode, Humpty and Pichi discuss the evolving creator economy with Brennan from Tavern.

Key Takeaways

Food for thought - About Tavern: Brennan explains that the inspiration for Tavern came from a desire to create a new type of product for public discourse, particularly in the context of decentralized governance.

Tip - Audio spaces to build community: Pichi emphasizes the importance of real human interaction in audio spaces, noting that voice communication fosters trust and connection more quickly than text-based interactions.

Foot for thought - On bots vs human engagement: While bots can be trained to mimic human behavior, humans tend to make more mistakes, making them easier to identify.

Tool - Potential Tavern improvements: In the future, Tavern could further integrate with Farcaster to more dynamically reflect live conversations in channels or on speaker profiles, for example inside Warpcast. Brennan is considering features like giveaways, polling, POAPs, and NFT rewards to enhance user interaction. It could also let creators drop their own tokens to the audience.

Tip - Build in public: Use tools like Tavern to build in public, share your values, and have people adhere and amplify your message.

Thank you for reading!