tl;dr
Farcaster, a decentralized social media protocol, secured a $150 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm and other investment firms. The funding values the startup at $1 billion, making it the latest crypto unicorn. Co-founder Dan Romero outlined plans to focus on growing daily active users a...
Farcaster, a decentralized social media protocol, has secured a $150 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm and other investment firms. This funding values the startup at $1 billion, making it the latest crypto unicorn.
Co-founder Dan Romero outlined plans to focus on growing daily active users and adding developer features. Farcaster, built on Ethereum's Optimism, gained traction after its permissionless launch in October 2023 and the launch of Frames in 2024, which integrates external app functionality into the social feed.
Founded in 2020 by Coinbase alums, Farcaster has seen significant growth, claiming 350,000 paid sign-ups and a 50-fold increase in network activity. The funding round was led by Paradigm, with participation from investment firms including Andreessen Horowitz's a16z crypto fund, Haun Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Variant, and Standard Crypto, among others.
The raise was announced in a post by Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero, who outlined the firm’s priorities for the newly raised capital: "We're focused on two things for the rest of the year: Growing daily active users adding developer primitives to the protocol like channels and direct messaging."
Farcaster's permissionless launch in October 2023 opened the protocol to all developers and users. Since then, Farcaster has seen sizable growth, claiming 350,000 paid sign-ups and a 50-fold increase in network activity. The network is built on Optimism, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling network.
At the start of 2024, Farcaster gained significant traction with the launch of Frames, a feature that integrates functionality from external apps without disrupting the user experience. This article was written with the assistance of AI and edited and fact-checked by Andrew Hayward.